My Boyfriend
by The Invader Androgynous
Summary: In order to fool her parents and keep her standing on their will, HEVN has to produce a fiance for their visit. Well, she knows plenty of handsome, eligible young men. That shouldn't be a problem, should it?
1. Visitation Rights

A/N: This story's name is actually "My Gay Boyfriend" after the rather amusing song. However, it was pointed out to me that "gay" when used in reference to sexuality isn't considered by some people to be a G-rated word. So to be on the safe side with 's policies, I've only called this "My Boyfriend" on the main page, but those who actually read author's notes will now know its real name. Oh, and since I'm making a note, I _should_ probably mention that I don't own Get Backers, but I can lay intellectual property claim to the ideas contained in this story. No stealy!

I'm having trouble figuring out HEVN's timeline for this. In the manga, she's 21. However, in the anime, she was a scientist working on a project of great national importance. Now, last time I checked, you had to have been through at least some college to be a government scientist. Unless she was an undergraduate research assistant, or unless I don't understand Japan's school systems/gov research industries. Which I don't, and which I only get links to "Wolfwood is in the Yakuza" when I try to google it. I hate election year politics. Anyway, if anyone knows how to rectify the fact that she's the world's youngest government scientist... good for you, because I don't!

--

HEVN pushed the "get messages" button on her cell phone, yawning with a slight sense of boredom. No one had called her to arrange a job in three days, and she was running a bit low on cash. Please, please let this be a job with a large payout, she thought to herself.

"Hey, dear," a man's voice said. Nuts, it was only her parents. "Your mother got a great deal on a travel package to Japan. It's been a long time, hasn't it? Since we moved back to America and you stayed in Japan with your aunt to finish high school, and then you got that great job at the research firm. We're so proud of you, darling. That's why we're really looking forward to visiting you, seeing where you work, meeting your fiancé..."

By this time, HEVN's face was turning all kinds of shades of colors. Her parents had sworn never to fly again after the terrorist events in America, so she hadn't thought she'd ever be seeing them face to face again. Thus, in her videos and emails to them, she hadn't thought anything of fudging the truth about her life to them. After all, how could she explain that she'd quit her well-paying job with retirement benefits to crawl around the streets of Shinjuku? Especially since her new job was finding jobs for people her parents wouldn't normally touch with a forty-foot pole.

Of course, that was not pointing out that her fiancé was currently in another country after having sold the technology she'd been helping develop to an enemy country. She hadn't exactly mentioned _that_ to her parents, either.

There were only two options that the young, yellow-eyed blonde could see. The first option was to come clean to her parents about the fact that she'd lied to them about her job and her fiancé. The second was to produce a fiancé and a workplace, but that seemed too hard. No, best to come clean to her parents...

Until she listened to the second message on her cell phone. "Oh, HEVN-dear, sweet HEVN. You're still using that silly government code name? I'm coming to visit with the parents, and I'm brining my fiancé. Dad says he doesn't want to wait until he's dead to divide up the family fortune, so we'll work that out between us and our fiancés when we come to visit. You do have one, don't you? Because if you don't, I doubt dad will give you one red cent. You know how he feels about unmarried women and feminists... So you'd better not have been lying to us, dear HEVN-san," her sister's voice chirped over the phone. How someone could be so evil and so happy at the same time, she didn't... wait, she knew Akabane-san.

Her sister was right, though. Her rather chauvinist father wouldn't leave her a single penny if thought there wasn't a man ready to receive it, and not even her mom could convince him otherwise. She had to produce at least a fiancé, if not a job. Well, that shouldn't be a problem. She knew tons of eligible, handsome young men. Best of all most of them were dead broke. Finding someone willing to be her fiancé for hire shouldn't be hard at all!

HEVN went over what she'd told her parents about her fiancé in her emails. Handsome, but not anything that would cause you to do a double take. Dark hair, dark eyes. Dignified, elegant, and amazingly intelligent. Rich, as far as scientists go. Fantastic conversationalist, willing to wait until marriage before going all the way.

Well, okay, so none of the men she knew exactly fit that profile, but she could pay them to pretend they did. The only catch was that she had to get someone with poise. If her father thought she was hooking up with what he deemed to be a "commoner," rude, or just plain unworthy of his precious daughter she still wouldn't see any of the inheritance.

Ban knows how to play the violin and appreciates fine art, HEVN thought to herself as she pushed open the door to the Honky Tonk. That, and he's desperate for money. I'll be able to buy his services as a false fiancé on the cheap...

"UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRP!" Ban belched loud and clear. "Beat that, Ginji."

Ginji took as deep of breath as he could manage. "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP!"

Natsumi giggled and applauded, thinking the boy's belching contest was cute. She turned her head to HEVN, standing with a greenish look on her face in the doorway. "Welcome, HEVN-san! Want to watch Ban and Ginji burp the English alphabet?"

In HEVN's mind, she was sitting at dinner with her father, mother, sister, and sister's fiancé. Her head was down in her food as Ban stood up in his chair, belching out the Star Spangled Banner in honor of his American guests. All her relatives faces were combinations of red, green, and white, and her father was crossing her name off the will as fast as possible. Her vision ended with her father realizing that Ban had eaten so quickly he'd thrown food all over them, then had stolen his wallet on the way out.

"No... thank you... I just came by... too say hello," she said, quickly turning around and fleeing from the Honky Tonk as though the hounds of hell were on her high heels.

"What was that all about?" Ginji asked.

"Dunno," Ban shrugged. "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRP!"

"Oh, I can beat that! BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPP!"

Okay, so Ban doesn't have the tact I need. Kazuki, however, is very graceful and elegant. He's the very definition of graceful and elegant, just with the way he walks and the way he talks. A real gentleman's gentleman. If she could get him to hide his hair under a hat so her father wouldn't write him off as too girly, he'd be perfect.

Kazuki let her into the apartment he'd shared with Jubei ever since Jubei became blind. "Oh, HEVN-san, come in."

"Thank you, Kazuki-kun. Say, do you like the theater and expensive dinners?"

"Oh, I love them! Jubei does too."

"Well... I... was kind of... thinking of... dinner for just the two of us."

Kazuki shook his head. "Jubei is really depressed about not being as funny as Emishi, so I can't leave him alone right now. I'd be more than willing to pay for his meal, though, if you wanted both of us to come along."

In HEVN's mind, she was introducing Kazuki to her father. "This is my fiancé, and this is his... blind friend Jubei."

Jubei suddenly lept forward. "Do you like jokes? I will tell you one! Why did the chicken cross the road?"

"Err," her father said.

"Because it was stapled to the turkey!"

Everyone just stared. "Don't- don't you mean, the turkey was stapled to the chicken?" her sister asked timidly.

Jubei's face went blank. "You're right, I have failed the joke. I will commit ritual suicide as apologies!!!!"

"Jubei, no!" Kazuki cried. Jubei knocked his hat off in the flailing about trying to stop the suicide, revealing those long, beautiful locks.

"Gasp! My daughter's fiancé is a femme man? You're off the will!" her father cried in her imagination sequence.

HEVN returned slowly to reality. "I... I'll let you know when I know the date!" she cried, scooping up her purse and fleeing as quickly from the apartment as possible. Well, cross Kazuki off the list, since Jubei apparently came as part of the package deal.

She decided to try Shido. She was sure Madoka would understand that she was just borrowing him, not trying to steal his heart. Madoka was a sweet enough girl. As she walked towards the mansion, however, she began to remember the story of how Shido attempted to go to Madoka's recital... and was several hours late. Not minutes, hours.

In her mind, HEVN sat nervously at the table, stirring her drink. "You... do have a fiancé, right?" her sister was sneering.

"Yes, he's just always late!" HEVN cried in protest.

"How unprofessional," snorted her father.

"I bet she lied to us and doesn't really have one," her sister smirked.

"You're right," HEVN's mental father agreed. "She's off the will for lying to me!"

HEVN paused in front of the gates to Madoka's mansion. Nope, she wasn't going to even try asking Shido.

"Hello! HEVN-san it was, wasn't it?" Emishi asked, surprising her. She looked him up and down, opened her mouth- and then closed it. No to that, as well.

"Just taking a walk!" HEVN cried, jogging away from Emishi as fast as she could in high heels. She wasn't even going to go there.

Distress had settled of HEVN's heart. She was running quickly out of eligible bachelors. Heck, she'd even take a married guy if she could. Just someone with enough class to impress her father long enough to get her on the will...

"Maybe I could ask Paul," she muttered to herself. "I mean, maybe dad won't notice how old he is. Maybe dad will be impressed that I'm dating and older man. Maybe..."

The loud blast of a truck horn honking suddenly threw HEVN back into reality. She'd wandered off the sidewalk and right into the path of a semi truck! Realizing there wasn't enough time to run out of the way, HEVN screamed and threw her hands up in front of her face in a weak defensive gesture.

The truck managed to swerve around her so closely that she felt one of the rear-view mirrors brush past the hair on the top of her head. Shaking, HEVN collapsed into a bundle of jelly. She wasn't sure if she could count that as the first bit of good luck she'd had all day, or as just one more bad luck incident dropping on her head. After all, it had missed her... barely.

"Miss Mediator?" a familiar, cold voice asked. "My, standing in the middle of the road isn't like you. You are fortunate Mr. No Brakes has such good control of his vehicle."

HEVN, still shaking, looked up to see Akabane's cruel purple eyes looking down at her from the passenger window of the truck. Somehow, despite being so close to death she could kiss it, the part of her brain still searching for a fiancé was working just fine. In her head, she was introducing Akabane to her parents.

Midway through dinner, he declared he was bored and killed her entire family. HEVN watched with a feeling of sick glee as her evil sister's head rolled across the floor, mouth still open and hanging in the middle of yet another critism or comment about how much better she was than HEVN.

HEVN saw herself sobbing to the police about how she'd hired a man off the street to pretend to be her fiancé, she hadn't know he was a serial killer, honest! HEVN saw herself on all the TV stations, crying for her dear, departed family and swearing vengeance on the killer.

HEVN saw herself receiving the entire family fortune, being rid of the greatest source of evil in her life, and slipping a rather large reward to Akabane as a result. As you can tell, HEVN is not really sad that her family moved to America and left her in Japan, planning never to see her again. They don't really get along.

Okay, so perhaps the part of her brain thinking about needing a fiancé had been badly damaged by the near-death experience, but it didn't bother to inform the rest of her brain about it. In fact, it had the rest of her rather convinced it had just come up with the greatest idea ever.

"You're perfect!" she cried, the sheer power of happiness propelling her off the ground and up to the window, where she wrapped her arms around an incredibly surprised Akabane-san's face.

"I'm... confused," Akabane responded dryly, pushing HEVN off his face. "Perfect for what?"

"Are you on a job right now?"

Akabane shook his head slowly. "Just returning from one- gack!" Mr. No Brakes watched in horrified amusement as HEVN dragged Akabane out of the truck and away by his tie. That girl either had guts to do that to Jackal, or she was insane beyond help. Frankly, Mr. No Brakes didn't want to stick around long enough to find out which it was or see the bloody aftermath.

Akabane, fingering the red marks HEVN had left on his neck by dragging him around by his tie, frowned and stirred the drink she'd bought him. "So you want me to pretend to be your fiancé so you can inherit a fortune? I'm a transporter, not an actor."

"That doesn't matter! I'll pay you handsomely!"

Akabane flicked the spoon out of his drink, eyes closed and a rather frustrated look on his face. "You should know by now that I decide my jobs based on how much pleasure, not how much money, they will bring me."

"Then... then... there has to be some way I can pay you in pleasure!" she shouted, pounding on the table. Several people at the bar stared, hearing what just sounded like a line from a bad porno spouted by the girl with the gigantic breasts.

Even Akabane himself took a moment to blink at that comment. "You're amusing, Miss Mediator."

"If I'm amusing, then please... take the job..." HEVN said, resorting to her final power... girl tears. Her eyes filled up with salty water and she began to sniffle. "If my father writes me out of the will, I'll... I'll... I'll have to stop finding jobs for Ban and Ginji and take up work as a waitress!"

Akabane pulled down the brim of his hat to think about that. If Ban and Ginji stopped getting jobs, that meant no more Get Backers. No more Get Backers meant very boring work for Akabane-san. Akabane-san hated to be bored. Thus, logically...

He surrendered. "Fine. I'll help you, but not for you. For Ginji-kun's continued employment for my enjoyment. You shall tell no one of this. I believe you know I'm earnest when I make that threat."

HEVN nodded. The tears worked every time. "Thank you, thank you, Akabane-san." In her joy over having brought him around to seeing her way, she didn't notice him pulling his hat down even further so he could roll his eyes without offending her.

"Now, to just secure a place of employment," HEVN mused out loud. "I know! I'll have Paul let me show my parents his computer room, and say the Honky Tonk is just a cover for the secret research going on below..."

"Secret research? My, Miss Mediator, the stories you've been telling your parents..."

HEVN froze. She'd said that out loud? Great. Akabane didn't know her past, and she was in no mood to share the details of it with him beyond what she had to in order to make him into a convincing fiancé.

"I- er- I... told my parents I help secret agents with their missions. If you consider Ban and Ginji to be secret agents, then it's _almost_ true."

Akabane glanced at her and it was obvious even with that hat shading his face that the look he was giving her was one of doubt. "Stop looking so high and mighty. What do you tell your parents you do for a living?" she snapped.

"You really should learn more about me, Miss Mediator, before making such assumptions," was all he answered, confusing HEVN. Not that she really cared either way, mind you. She only had to put up with Akabane until her parents left Japan.

"Look, I'll send you the sheets of information so you can play my fiancé well enough to fool my parents. Think of it as a role playing game."

Akabane stood up, leaving his drink only half finished. "I'm not doing this for you, Miss Mediator, and I wish you to keep that in mind when dealing with me in the future." With that and a swish of black fabric, he was gone out the door, leaving HEVN to begin to break into a nervous sweat. Could she really trust him to fill the role, or had her brain just transformed him into the perfect replacement out of desperation and the sheer shock of almost being flattened by a truck?

"Ugh, bad brain!" HEVN muttered, paying the bar bill and heading back to her apartment. She had some changes to make to her living quarters.


	2. Regretably, they made another chapter

HEVN waiting nervously at the airport for her parent's and sister's plane to arrive. A storm out at sea had delayed the arrival, giving her more time to pace the terminal. She hoped her deodorant could hold up to how much she was sweating out of sheer nerves, as the suit she was wearing was new and she didn't want to stain it after just one wearing.

Where the heck was Akabane? He was supposed to meet her at the airport, and not only was her family's plane late, her fake fiancé was late. "I knew I never should have trusted something so important to… to… a transporter!" she spat, her hands curled into such tight fists that her fake nails were pressing into her palms and drawing blood.

"HEVN-san?" a familiar cold voice inquired. She looked up, eyes practically flaring with anger.

"Where the heck have you- whaaaaaa…." HEVN found herself caught in mid-sentence.

Akabane reached up and nervously fingered his hair. "You don't like it? I spent a lot of time combing it out last night… I even went through the work of getting it cut, and I'm not fond of letting people who aren't me handle parts of my body with blades."

HEVN frowned, as she honestly couldn't tell that the length had been changed. It was definitely neater than usual, slicked slightly back with a sweet smelling gel. His hat and coat looked like they had been cleaned recently, too, and his pants were more neatly pressed than usual.

"You don't look half bad when you take the time to take care of yourself," she smirked.

"I always take care of myself," Akabane replied indignantly, "but there are things more important to me than my physical appearance."

"That's odd; from the way you dress I'd always figured you for the vain sort despite the near dreadlock spikes…"

"Are you making fun of my hair?"

"Well, you do always have a pretty bad case of hat hair."

Akabane blinked at her. "Be careful, HEVN-san, insulting me may cause me to spontaneously mention that I'm not the person I'm pretending to be."

HEVN narrowed her eyes at him, then reached out. "Hold still, your tie is crooked," HEVN said, grabbing onto it and pushing it up so tightly that Akabane involuntarily gagged slightly. "You just keep in mind that if you don't behave yourself, I know Ban and Ginji, and last time I checked they could both kick your- MOM! DAD!" she cried, releasing Akabane's tie and pushing him aside. "Welcome back to Japan!"

"Welcome nothing," her father grunted. He was a relatively short, hunched man with gray hair and wrinkles. "Imagine, having to ride all that way next to some slob and not even getting a horrible airline meal to make it better. What are they charging you for anyway, more security? Those security guards couldn't find my metal hip with both hands in rubber gloves and a flash-"

"Dear, please, I know you're upset about your recent prostate examination but there's no reason to bring it up in a public place," HEVN's mother begged. She looked exactly like HEVN probably would in another twenty years. "This must be your fiancé. We've heard so much about you, Mr… Mr…. that's funny, I don't think she's ever told us your name."

Akabane looked at HEVN, patiently waiting for her to introduce him. "I didn't?" she asked, blinking. "Sister, I told you my fiance's name, didn't I?"

"No," her sister snorted, flicking her hair back. The girls could have been twins, other than her sister's short hair and green eyes. "All the reason to believe that you don't really have one."

"Excuse me, but he happens to be standing right here. This is… umm… Akabane Kuroudo. Kuroudo Akabane, you'd say in America."

Her father looked over Akabane. "Does it speak English?" he asked.

"Daddy! Don't call my fiancé an it, and it couldn't matter if he speaks English. I know you haven't forgotten your Japanese by now, have you?"

Her father waved her off dismissively. "Why should I speak the language of some little island when he can speak the language of a greater America?"

HEVN felt a vein popping out in her head. "Akabane-san, do you speak English?"

"A little, but not enough to understand anything your father just said," he answered.

HEVN turned back to her father. "He said he doesn't understand enough English to have any idea what you just said."

Her sister, Marci, grinned. "That means we can talk about him and he won't have any idea what we're saying."

"And I suppose your fiancé speaks Japanese, Marci?" HEVN snapped in response.

"Of course not, but I do, and if you make fun of him…"

"Well, I speak English, and if you make fun of my fianc"

Meanwhile, Akabane was trying to figure out from the few clues he could interpret between the girls what they were talking about. Fun, English, speak, and fiancé were the words he managed to catch. It is fun to speak English with your fiancé? Your fiancé has fun speaking English? Your fiancé does not speak English, that is fun?

"Akabane, are you paying any attention?" HEVN asked, jarring Akabane back to reality for the moment.

"Sorry, I became distracted."

HEVN sighed, not wanting to know what could have been going on in Jackal's head to lead him to become distracted. "Mom and dad want to take a taxi over to see my… workplace. They don't trust the trains that run in the area of Shinjuku, and we have to take their luggage to the hotel first. Anyway, we're not all going to be able to fit in one taxi, so I was wondering if you'd be willing to ride with my sister's fiancé.

"It shouldn't be a problem," Akabane answered. When he was certain her parents were busy cooing over a silk kimono on display at the airport, he leaned in closer. "HEVN-san, don't you think if you're supposed to be engaged to me, you should be referring to me by my first name?"

HEVN jumped a bit, realizing the mistake she'd been making all along. "Thank you for pointing that out. It's just weird to think of you as anything but… Akabane-san." She only hoped her parents or sister hadn't noticed her mistake yet. The last thing she needed was for even a single grain of suspicion to be planted into their minds.

The taxi ride turned out to be even more awkward than expected. Akabane stared at Clifford, Marci's fiancé. Clifford stared back at Akabane. Akabane didn't speak English very well. Clifford didn't speak Japanese at all. Finally, Clifford pointed as they drove past a small black cat walking along a fence. "Cat," he said.

Akabane rolled his eyes again, grateful that his hat concealed the gesture. Just because he didn't speak English didn't mean he needed a grade-school less in English.

"Neko," he replied, his tone of voice indicating that he was correcting Clifford.

Clifford's eyes narrowed slightly, suggesting that he'd picked up on Akabane's condescending tone of voice. For a moment, both parties were silent, and then Clifford pointed harshly to a little brown dog. "Dog," he said, trying to get the last word in.

Akabane was tempted to say inu, but he realized that with Clifford's lack of Japanese skills, there were more fun words to substitute. "Nihonjin," Akabane grinned at Clifford. Akabane was enjoying this game. Next thing Clifford pointed out was getting called "toilet."

Unfortunately for Clifford, by the time they'd reached the Honky Tonk, if he'd retained any of Akabane's "teachings", he'd learned that dog was Japanese person, telephone booth was toilet, convenience store was brothel, and small child was delicious, among other things.

"This is my secret government facility," HEVN said, introducing the Honky Tonk. She'd talked the plan over with Paul, and he'd agreed to let her pretend his computer room was her research facility if she'd pay off Ban and Ginji's tab. It had come to much more than she had expected, but it was worth it for the benefit of fooling her sister and parents.

"It looks like an ordinary bar," Marci snorted, clinging to Clifford's scrawny arm. "I feel like there are criminals all over this neighborhood, just waiting to take advantage of my supple young body! How can you work in such a terrible environment?"

"That's the beauty of it. Low rent, and you know how the government likes saving money. Besides, who would suspect a lowly bar of being a secret government facility?" she asked, pushing open the door.

She was barely inside when Ginji pounced on her head. "HEVN-saaaaaaaaaaaan, did you bring us a job!?"

"GAH!" HEVN cried, pushing the door shut in her father's face. "Paul, what are they doing here? We agreed that…"

"That I'd keep them out, yes, but you were late. I sent them on an errand, and they came back. If you'd been her on time…"

The door was thrown open from behind her. "HEVN, what is the nerve of slamming a door on your own father? I thought I raised you better than that, girl!"

HEVN stammered. "Da-daddy… mommy… these are… Midou-san and Amano-san! They're the security guards! They look like ordinary roughians, don't they? It's all part of the clever disguise."

"Disguise?" Ginji asked, making a chibi-face at HEVN's parents.

"It's all right, Ginji, you don't have to pretend that you don't know about this place actually being a secret government facility, I got clearance from the big boss man to tell them and show them just the computer room. Remember, Midou-san? Our discussion?"

For some reason, Ban actually seemed to catch on, and be willing to play along. Oh, he's going to make me pay for this later, HEVN thought as she made a sour face. The fact that Ban's grin only increased when she made her face let her know that yes, he definitely intended to make her pay. "Oh, of course, HEVN-san. Go right ahead and show your parents the computer room. I'm sure they'll enjoy it."

HEVN began herding her parents towards the hidden room. "Come on, hurry hurry, I agreed you'd just take a quick look and then we have to be at the restaurant or they'll cancel our reservations…"

"Wait, where's your fi-an-ce?" her sister asked, loud and sing-song.

Ban and Ginji's faces went flat. "Fiancé, HEVN-san?" Ginji asked.

HEVN grabbed her sister. "You idiot, we're not allowed to talk about our personal lives in front of one another, lest terrorists be able to use the information against us."

"Oh, come on now, HEVN-san, it's not that big of leak," Ban cooed, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you introduce us to your illustrious fiancé? We'd love to meet the man bright enough to steal our HEVN's heart."

"I thought your fiancé worked with you, dear?" her mother questioned.

"Yes, and it's been really hard to keep the fact that we're engaged secret from the guards. We could get fired for sharing personal details in front of them, mom, so please, let's not mention this any more and just go look at the computer room…"

"Come on now, what harm could it be to tell the that you're engaged to Mr. Kuroudo Akabane?" her sister smirked, grinning so broadly that it looked like her lips extended straight up to the corners of her ears. "Oh, my, they seem surprised by that information."

Indeed, Ban and Ginji had both turned several different shades of white and green. Ginji was shaking and looked like he was going to throw up, and Ban just looked pissed off. HEVN could see his hands, rolled into fists, shaking slightly.

"You… you can see another reason I… never told them," HEVN said, her voice turning into a weak squeak.

Fortunately, Paul had been watching the situation from upstairs, and rushed to the rescue. "HEVN! What are you doing talking about personal information in front of the guards? You know that if the boss found out, he'd…"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Wan. I'm so sorry; my parents spilled it because I forgot to brief them about the rules. Please don't let me be fired for this error."

"I will if everyone just _forgets_ about it," he said threateningly, casting his eyes at Ban and Ginji. "That is, unless some people never want to be able to enjoy a pizza here again. I'm afraid, however, that your family has to leave right away. We can't risk the boss finding out about what they said."

"You heard the man!" HEVN said, shoving her family back out the door.

"Darn it, I wanted to see where you worked!" her father snapped. "I wanted to test your super computers at a game of chess."

"They're not… programmed to play chess, daddy…"

"Hump, then they can't be that super of super computers. You know I only let you continue working at such an ugly job is because of all the rich, single men…"

Akabane rejoined them, walking in step slightly behind HEVN. "Why didn't you follow us into the Honky Tonk?" she asked quietly.

"I could smell Ban's blood, and I knew I wouldn't be welcome there in his presence."

"I can see where you're coming from, and I believe you made the right choice. A fight is the last thing I want right now."

"What _are_ you two whispering about?" Marci mocked, holding her bleach-blonde boyfriend's hand. "Your plans to keep tricking us into thinking you're really engaged?"

HEVN's eyes clouded over with black rage, so much so that she had to put her head down and take several deep breaths to avoid exploding. Her sister was so close to the truth, and yet only saying it to get under her skin. It was making HEVN ready to blow into pieces.

She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder and looked up in surprise to see Akabane's blood-freezing cold smile. "Don't let her get to you, HEVN-san. Seeing you two fight reminds me of the fact that I actually used to regret having no siblings when I was younger."

She grabbed his gloved hand, intending to throw it off her shoulder, then noticed her mother looking directly at them. Sighing in resignation, she just let her fingers slip off of his. "I don't need your cold comforts," she whisper-snapped, walking faster to get away from him.

Akabane found himself distinctly bored at the table. HEVN and her family were speaking in English, and Clifford was merely giving him what was either death glares or I'm superior to you because I speak another language glares. He didn't have the energy to interpret Clifford's actions, as he was incredibly bored. Bored enough to do things that would later be regrettable, had he not had a great capacity for self-control.

Mainly, he was noticing the lack of things on the menu that his very specific dietary needs would allow him to actually consume. Well, there was always plain sushi, even if HEVN's father had indirectly ordered him to buy something expensive to celebrate the occasion.

"After all, it's not every day we fly to Japan to see our daughter," her father laughed, holding a cup of sake in the air.

"Darling, please mind your manners," her mother practically whispered. "Japanese people are more reserved."

He slammed the cup down on the table, having already had perhaps a bit too much. "Ah, come on, dear, drink up. I'm paying, and I'm shelling out like I haven't in years. After all, we gotta decide what the will's gonna say tomorrow, so I might as well blow as much of what's supposed to be in it tonight as we can."

HEVN began coughing on her drink. "To-tomorrow? I thought we were going to decide the will after the theater."

"Is there a problem with deciding the will tomorrow? As in, your fake fiancé was only hired for one night?"

"That's- that's not it!" she cried, even though that was exactly it. "I just haven't checked his schedule; he might be working tomorrow night. He works unusual hours, being in the large-market transport business and all…"

"Oh, of course he is. Do pizzas count as large market?"

HEVN felt the throbbing vein in her forehead growing even larger. "He's not a pizza delivery boy! I'm glad he can't understand what you're saying!"

"HEVN, Marci, please sit down! Don't embarrass us in front of the locals," her mother pleaded.

They're only here for a week, HEVN thought to herself, taking deep breaths. They're only here for a week… I can make it. I've dealt with Ban and Ginji all this time; I can stand my own family for a week. They are my family, I love them, they are my family, I love them, she repeated in her head, trying to convince herself that her thoughts were true. She looked over to her left… and saw an empty chair.

"Eh? Mom? Dad? Did you see where Kuroudo went?"

Her whole family and Clifford looked to the empty seat. "Maybe his meter expired," Marci snorted.

"He probably just went to the bathroom, dear."

"I bet he won't come back."

HEVN stood up so quickly that her chair toppled over behind her. A vein throbbed visibly in her forehead. "Stay here, I'm going to go find him." Without waiting for them to protest her actions, she ran off in the direction of the doors that led from the restaurant to the street outside.

About a half minute after HEVN ran out the door, thinking Akabane had fled, Akabane arrived back at the table. "Where did HEVN go?" he asked, noticing the toppled-over chair a waiter was attempting to make upright.

"She ran off looking for you. Where the heck were you?"

"I have allergies and wanted to check for a certain food item in what I wanted to order. I'll go retrieve HEVN now, if you wish." With that, he was also gone.

As soon as Akabane had left for the second time, Marci got up as well. "Something suspicious is going on here," she snarled, chasing after HEVN and Akabane.

"Marci, no! You don't know the neighborhood!" her mother cried, standing up to go after her. The girl's father grabbed her wrist.

"Neither do you. Sit here; they'll come back."

HEVN looked both ways across the street, not seeing Akabane. "Kuroudo! Akabane-san! You come back here! Damn it, we had an agreement!" Looking back and forth, she caught a quick glimpse of something moving down the side alley behind the restaurant.

"Come back here, you!" she cried, running after the movement. However, turning around the corner, she found herself facing only a scrawny black cat dragging day-old sushi out of the trash. She sighed. If Akabane wanted to be gone, she fully realized, he would already be too far gone for someone without superhuman speed to pursue.

A heavy hand suddenly fell on her shoulder, causing her to scream. "What's wrong, sister?" a familiar mocking female voice asked. HEVN turned around and shoved Marci's hand off her shoulder. Marci continued to smile. "Lose your fiancé?"

"You shut up! You've done nothing but make fun of me and him since you've arrived! What is your problem, anyway?"

Marci's eyes narrowed. "As if you don't know. Oh, HEVN has a fiancé! Why don't you have a boyfriend, Marci? Oh, you're engaged, Marci? That's nice, remember when HEVN got engaged? Wasn't that big news?"

"You're-you're jealous? Of _me?_ After dad practically cut me out of the family entirely for choosing to stay in Japan and make something of myself?!"

"He didn't cut you out entirely, or we wouldn't be fighting over his will like this. Admit it, HEVN. There's something fishy about you and your so-called boyfriend!"

A man's voice laughed in the darkness, causing both women to start. "You girls shouldn't argue so loudly in an alley. Draws attention to you, exactly how dark it is, and how much pretty jewelry you're wearing."

Figures and shapes emerged out of the shadows, equally laughing. "Why don't you hand them over, girlie, and we'll let you go?"

HEVN put her arm defensively in front of her sister, taking what she hoped to be a strong stance. "Go away. This is a well-kept part of town, you won't get away without being caught on camera!"

"That's right, there's no way I'd let thugs like you handle my diamonds!" Marci suddenly shouted. HEVN looked back at her, a miserable expression on her face. She even seemed to have turned a shade or two of green.

"Thanks for telling us they're real, babes. Say, how about you girls have a little fun with us? You're real pretty; it'd be a shame to take just your shiny things and run away," one of the thugs smirked, brazenly reaching out to grab the girls.

HEVN grabbed towards her purse, having taken up carrying a stun gun after the kidnapping incident in the Infinite Castle. Before the man's hand ever reached contact with its intended target, the thug shrieked in pain and drew back, a bloody stump remaining where his hand had been.

HEVN yanked her sister further behind herself and Akabane. She'd reached her stun gun by that point, holding the humming black device in her hand. Akabane looked down at it for just a second, the oddest expression on his face. "I got it in Infinite Castle," HEVN shrugged. Akabane shrugged as well, seemingly satisfied by the explanation.

One of the would-be thieves took a step closer to HEVN before the bandana-clad man beside him grabbed his shoulder and held him back. "I recognize that man. Back quietly away from him. Don't run. If you run; you'll end up de-" the bandana thug looked about and realized the rest of his squad had already run away once it had dawned on them who they were looking at as well. "Eep," he muttered before also turning tail and running like a whipped puppy.

"That was… sadly easy," Akabane complained. "And here I was hoping for something to alleviate my boredom."

HEVN shook her head in frustration. "You really are a selfish bastard, aren't you?" When Akabane didn't justify her comment with a response, HEVN looked behind her. "Marci, you okay? Marci?"

Marci was shaking like a leaf, her eyes wide and one hand up on her mouth as if silencing a cry trying to be born. Her other shaking hand was pointing directly at Akabane's hand, glowing scalpels still sticking out of his clutched fist.

"He's… he's not human!" she screamed.

And now, because it was requested, a "To Be Continued".


	3. Underwear Bribery

Note Time!: Since people have asked, the "gay" in the boyfriend title refers to the fact that the vast majority of Get Backers stories with pairings in them are male x male, leading one to believe the entire cast is gay from the fandom. So there's your answer. No, I am not giving you a better one.

-End Note-

"It… it isn't what you think, Marci!" HEVN shouted back, feeling worry creep up into her throat. Akabane had turned his attention directly towards Marci. She'd seen his power, and HEVN had no idea how opposed Akabane was or wasn't to people outside of the underworld circuit seeing his abilities. True, in a fit of desperation she may have imagined Akabane killing her sister, but now that he was taking a dangerous step towards her sister, she realized how little she actually wanted that fantasy to come true.

HEVN reached out and gripped Akabane's arm tightly, not caring if it put herself in danger. "Akabane-san, no!" she cried.

Akabane looked down at her, eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat. Shoving her aside, he reached out to Marci.

"No! Keep away!" Marci screamed, her hands thrown up over her face protectively. "Don't come any closer or… or…" Marci wavered on her feet unevenly, and then collapsed onto her side in a heap of human.

There was a brief moment of silence, during which a slightly garbage-scented wind rustled through HEVN's hair. She'd seen Akabane put enemies to sleep before, back in Infinite Castle. She just hadn't expected that to be his reaction.

He was kneeling down in front of Marci, his coat spread around his ankles in a wide half-circle. Cautiously, he slid a gloved hand under Marci's sleeping form and hefted her up and over his shoulder. A few moments after Marci managed to regain consciousness, blinking as the street lights pained her eyes, she looked sideways at HEVN. "What… what happened? The last thing I remember, there were these thieves…"

"You fainted, Marci," HEVN explained, touching her sister's face gently. She was surprised to be able to feel a few almost premature wrinkles, considering how young her sister was. "Don't worry, they're gone now. Come on, mom and dad will be worried about us."

"Sister?" Marci asked as HEVN began walking towards the restaurant. She paused.

"Yes, Marci?"

"Can we… not tell mom and dad about those guys? It will only worry them."

HEVN shut her eyes and mouth contemplatively, humming a bit in a low voice before deciding. Opening her eyes, she sighed, "If that's what you want."

Marci nodded, her short hair springing about her face in thick, fashionable curls. "It is."

HEVN thought it was an odd request, but didn't particularly mind if her sister wanted to keep the near-attack a secret. Taking her sister from Akabane and draping Marci across her shoulders, HEVN assisted her sister back to the front door of the restaurant, Akabane following two steps behind them.

After the day had ended and darkness had settled over the streets of Tokyo, HEVN waved a pleasant good-bye to her sister and parents as the taxi pulled away from the lush hotel the group was staying at. Once she was certain they were too far away to be seen or heard, she let out a deep sigh of extreme relief.

"One day down, six days left to go," she moaned, her voice taking on the tone of a prisoner after a long day on the torture racks.

"I only agreed to help you tonight," Akabane disagreed, his face not reflecting any sort of anger. His voice, however, was more on edge than his usual flat tone.

"Remember, it's for Ginji-kun," HEVN encouraged, punching a fist in the air. Akabane's eye twitched slightly, a bit annoyed at the fact that HEVN had played the Ginji card every single time he'd had any sort of objection to her plans that entire day.

"Perhaps I've overestimated the value of Ginji's amusement," Akabane replied, knowing that wasn't true but still wanting to get some indication of his displeasure at having to play HEVN's game.

HEVN signed and leaned back against the rough interior of the battered taxi. "At least my family is staying at the hotel and won't ever see my apartment, seeing as how I told them my fiancé lives with me." She noticed the look Akabane was giving her and gave him a quick explanation. "It was shortly after my father said he was going to cut me out of the family for wanting to get a government job in Japan instead of returning to America that I told them that. If they were going to be mad at me, I really wanted to really make them mad."

"So you told them you were living with your boyfriend. How juvenile."

"I was nineteen at the time. I was juvenile."

"Understandable and excusable, then," Akabane shrugged. "Your cell phone is making a funny noise."

"Huh?" HEVN asked, suddenly realizing that not only was her cell phone making a funny noise, but it was vibrating like crazy in her bag. "Ah! I forgot that I put it on vibrate!" After what seemed like an eternity of digging through the masses of things in her purse that only women feel the need to constantly carry with them, she managed to find the elusive cellular phone and answer it. "Hello?"

"Sister? Bad news! The hotel lost my and Clifford's registration! We don't want to stay with mom and dad because… well… that would just be _awkward_ to say the least. You don't mind if we sleep on your couch, do you? No? I knew you wouldn't; you're the greatest sister ever!" she cried, sounding overly happy. "We'll take a taxi over, see you shortly."

HEVN just stared at the dead phone, her hand shaking. Akabane, noticing, looked over at her and moved in closer to try to see if he could figure out what was going on. "Are you okay, Miss Mediator? You got that phone call and suddenly turned as white as a sheet."

HEVN's hand continued to shake. "How-how do you feel about sleepovers, Akabane-san?" she asked, sounding as if she were on the brink of tears.

Back outside the hotel, Marci hung up the phone and smiled to herself. The truth was, she'd never made a reservation for herself and Clifford in the first place. Clifford, standing with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, frowned at her. Her parents had long since retired to their own hotel room, oblivious to what their daughter was busily plotting below.

Marci smiled up at him, taking the cig from his lips and placing them between her own. He grunted. "Don't do that, you'll get lipstick on it."

"Shut up; I don't pay you to be disagreeable." She handed the cigarette back and turned on her heel, facing the leader of the 'gang' that had attacked herself and HEVN in the back alleyway. "As for you, that was simply miserable. Things couldn't have worked out better. I practically handed her to you on a silver platter, and you let her go."

The gang boss grunted angrily at her. "You didn't tell us she was under the protection of that Dr. Jackal bastard."

"This brings up another interesting point. Why would your sister hire a killer of such fame to protect her and pretend to be her fiancé unless she already suspected our reasons for wanting her out of the picture?"

Marci frowned and took the shared cigarette again. "We wouldn't have to eliminate my sister if father hadn't changed the will, and that is truly regrettable. However, if she gets part of the business and looks over the books…"

"She could find we cooked them, and we could have another Enron on our hands," Clifford answered, taking his cig back from Marci and taking another deep puff on it. "You don't want that; you lose your money. I don't want that; I lose my money and my job. The shareholders don't want that; their stocks will tank."

"That's why my dear beloved sister has to go, even if I have to go through Doctor Jekyll to get to her."

Clifford put an arm around Marci, smiling as he looked deeply into her cold eyes. "Face it; your jealousy is enough of a reason for you to want to eliminate your sister. The financial books are just icing on the cake of revenge."

"Cake of revenge? You sound like a corny soap-opera villain." Marci turned her attention back to the gang leader. "If I can't trust your men to be competent, I'm going to have to off my sister myself, which means that you don't get paid."

The leader gave her a frustrated look, grinding his teeth. "Allow us to try again. Now that we know who we're up against, we can formulate a specific defense against his abilities."

Marci smiled and patted the boss condescendingly on the shoulder, as she wasn't tall enough to reach his head. "I'll give you one more chance. You'd better not fail me."

Back at HEVN's apartment, HEVN was down on her knees, hands held together in a praying/pleading position, clinging to Akabane's coat. "Please, please! You have to stay at my place. I'll give you anything you want, anything!"

Akabane frowned, trying pull his coat our of HEVN's iron grip without tearing the lining. He'd never known anyone to cling so tenaciously before. "Anything, you say?" he smirked.

HEVN's face turned red. "Anything but… but… nothing hentai!"

"Interesting how your morals work," he commented, tugging on his coat. He considered cutting off a few of her fingers to free himself, but then realize that Ginji-kun would be Very Unhappy with him if he did so.

"If you help me, I'll… give you a pair of Ginji's underwear."

Akabane stopped trying to pry her fingers off, utterly blindsided by HEVN's sudden statement. "Excuse me?"

"He left a pair here when they used my machine to do their laundry. I'd been meaning to give them back, but I keep forgetting…"

"Can I take a moment to understand this, please? You're bribing me… with underwear? I think you may have gotten the wrong impression about me at some point in time." With a final yank, he managed to get his coat away from her. However, right at that moment, the dreaded knock at the door came.

"She's here!" HEVN cried, looking pleadingly back at Akabane. "Please, pleeeeeeeeease?"

Akabane looked straight at her and smiled wickedly. "I want to watch you telling Ginji-kun that you gave his personal underthing to me."

"Huh?" HEVN asked, face blank.

"That's the price of my cooperation. I think it will be most fun to see the expression on his face…"

The knock at the door became louder. HEVN made a fist, her veins once again throbbing visibly beneath her pretty skin. "Damn you, Dr. Jackal… You have a deal!" she cried, running to answer the door. Why does he like to hurt people so much, HEVN wondered as she undid the locks. He really is the monster everyone says he is…

Marci carried her bags in, Clifford following like the obedient dog he unfortunately shared a name with. "We get the couch?" Marci asked, looking at it.

"I'll unfold it into bed form, but it's still going to be a little bit cramped I'm afraid." In her head, HEVN was trying to work out how to get a suitcase of Akabane's possessions into her apartment without her sister seeing her do so. Akabane, for his part, had disappeared off into the bathroom and absolved himself of any implication in the moment. Just like a man to vanish when there's work to be done, HEVN snorted to herself. "Are you sure you don't want to try to find another hotel?"

"Of course not," Marci waved her off. "After all, I want to be close to my dear sister. Really close." If HEVN hadn't been distracted by maneuvering the futon, she might have noticed the tone of malicious intent in her sister's voice. As it was, she didn't, and thus remained clueless about her sister's future bad intentions.

HEVN shut the sliding door separating the living room from the bedroom. As quietly as possible, she whispered, "You're going to have to bring your suitcase in from the balcony. There's a fire escape you can use to get up and down, tap on it when you return. I'll run the shower until you get back so my sister won't get suspicious."

Akabane glanced out the window at the less-than-safe looking fire escape. "Let me get this straight. I'm helping you, and yet I have to climb in and out of windows and up unsafe fire escapes to do so?"

"Unless you want to wear the same clothes every day for the rest of the week, yes," HEVN answered, feeling a bit short-tempered by the arrogance of the question.

"I am perfectly comfortable with that," he grinned.

Caught off guard, HEVN blinked at him. "What will you do about pajamas?"

"I don't mind sleeping naked."

After another few moments of blinking, HEVN stomped over to her purse and shoved a wad of cash into his hand. "For your taxi ride! Now get!" she ordered, shoving him out onto the balcony.

He frowned and looked back over his shoulder at her. "Be nicer to me, or I might not return." With that, he vanished off into the blackness of a Shinjuku night, leaving HEVN alone to contemplate whether she actually _wanted_ him to return or not.

She guessed the decision she came to was that she did, as she'd started running the shower to keep up illusions for her sister. The air outside had become thick with humidity since that afternoon. The smell of the cool air coming in through the window suggested to her that rain might come, possibly that night but not possibly until the next day. Silently, she hoped that if it would rain, Akabane would return before it did. The last thing she needed was him being wet on top of angry and unwilling to continue her ruse.

Akabane, meanwhile, had made good time to his own apartment and back because of the relative lack of traffic at that time in the morning. He rested in the back of the taxi, jarred out of his sleepy stupor only when a couple of illegal drifters squealed past their taxi at a stop light. The taxi driver swore in words that were inappropriate for the ears of a lady or a gentleman, cursing the joy riders and wishing their cars would burst into spontaneous flame. Akabane smiled, as the sounds of ill-will were pleasing to him.

The skies opened and the rain began to come down in absolute sheets the second he stepped out of the taxi in front of HEVN's apartment. Cursing his luck and taking it as a sign that even the heaven's themselves were against his agreement with HEVN, he dragged the perhaps overfull suitcase towards the fire escape.

Somehow, in the combination of the wetness and rain lashing his hair into his eyes like tiny whips, he missed a crooked step on the escape and his foot went down wrong. He felt a momentary shake as his ankle twisted at an angle it wasn't meant to go. He fell, reaching out blindly for the railing, but felt only the tips of his fingers brush against it as landed hard on his back and slid a good two stories down against the twisted metal structure.

It hurt. His back felt like it had been stabbed with a hot poker. Reaching up and drawing his hand around, he saw drops of brilliant red blood against the water pouring down his fingers. Hell. He'd torn his coat as well as his skin if he was bleeding.

"Where have you been?" HEVN snapped when he crawled through the patio door, dripping like a swamp monster from an old horror movie.

"You could be more grateful to me for coming back at all," he answered, not really snapping but sounding kind of like he meant to.

Akabane removed his hat and coat and hung them up, arranging a trash basket for them to drip into. It was only then that HEVN noticed a long but shallow cut running across his back. "You're hurt," she pointed out, biting down any concern she might have felt for him. After all, he was doing everything he could to be unpleasant to her, so why should she respond to him any differently? "Let me get the alcohol rubs."

"I can take care of it myself," Akabane disagreed, looking at the cut in the mirror. It was nothing for him, and would probably heal up relatively quickly.

"You can't possibly reach it," she argued, appearing out of her bathroom. "All I could find was the peroxide. Take off your shirt and hold still, this will sting a little."

"It's nothing compared to some experiences I've had."

"Don't be an ungrateful brat," HEVN said, rubbing peroxide on the cut and watching it bubble up. "That shirt is ruined."

"I can fix it."

"Oh, you sew?" HEVN smirked, rubbing the wound. "How domestic."

"When your power is fighting with blades, either you learn to sew or you buy yourself a new wardrobe frequently. Especially when you're just a beginner at it," Akabane shrugged.

"Stop moving, I'm going to bandage this."

"That really isn't necessary. It'll heal quickly enough."

"I don't want you to bleed on my sheets," HEVN answered, her mouth full of pins for holding the ace bandage she was wrapping around his chest in place. "You've got too much chest for my bandage."

"There's something very wrong when _I've_ got too much chest for _your_ bandages," he answered, knowing it was out of character for him but in such a bad mood that he didn't care.

HEVN froze, her first instinct being to rake a fist across his smug face. However, with all the stress she'd been under, hearing such a stupid, immature, out of place comment from someone as normally cool as Akabane… she burst into hysterical laughter. Of course, her voice sounded really strained, and it was obvious it was stress laughter, but it was laughter none-the-less. Honestly, she realized, it felt really good to laugh again.

"So, which side of the bed should I take?" Akabane asked, eyeing the mattress on the ground. It looked big enough for two people… if you had a really good imagination. "Or should I have brought a sleeping bag?"

HEVN blushed furiously. "No-now, we're two responsibly, mature adults. We can share a bed without stupid giggling or high-school sexual innuendo, I'm sure."

"If you're sure of it, then I am sure of it," Akabane answered calmly, disappearing into the bathroom to change into night clothes. HEVN looked down and realized her hands were bloodied from his wound. Disgusted, she rushed out into her small kitchen area to wash them.

By the time she returned to her bedroom, Akabane had emerged from the bathroom and was curled up on his side, seemingly already asleep. HEVN signed and shoved him slightly over, taking her own side of the bed. It was only then that she noticed an odd scent clinging to Akabane's scent. She hadn't noticed it before because of the rather heavy scent of menthol cigarettes overpowering it. It was an odd scent, almost a scent she associated with memories. It was heavy and sweet, like funerary flowers from a past era, and slightly dusty at the same time.

HEVN frowned. She'd smelled that scent before, but where? Searching her memory, she rolled onto her own side and drifted off into sleep.


	4. Popsicle Sticks

A/N: Right now I'm writing with my headphones on because the person who lives directly below me is having a party. Now, he doesn't normally throw parties, so I'm willing to forgive him. However, if it's this loud tomorrow, I'm getting out my DDR pads. Although, I do have a funny random story about DDR that I feel like sharing. There was one time when the person who lived below me came up to my place to complain about the stomping on the ceiling… however, when he saw the DDR pads, instead of getting mad, he said "Hey, is that DDR? I've always wanted to try that game!" and all turned out well in the end.

-End Incredibly Random author Note-

HEVN made a disgusted face and dug her sharply-filed fingernails into her pillow. Despite the fact that they were on as far opposite sides of the bed as possible, Akabane was annoying the hell out of her. It wasn't that he had cold feet, or that he tossed and turned in his sleep, or that he snored. It was the fact that he did none of those. Even back when she'd had a real boyfriend, she hadn't shared a bed with anyone who just laid there in one place and slept without making a sound. It was kind of creepy, almost like discovering you shared a bed with a corpse.

Akabane, for his part, was not actually asleep. It was a good thing HEVN didn't actually know that, for seeing his violet eyes wide and staring, unblinking, at the windows would have disturbed her all the more. He was watching the rain that had refused to let up, occasionally punctuated with bursts of lightning. However, his thoughts were not on the Thunder Emperor, as one might have expected from the distance look in his gaze.

In spite of not liking the company he was forced to keep, he was relatively grateful to be able to sleep in an actual bed for a few nights. His back and developed a terrible crack in it from the cold concrete floor of the warehouse basement. He hadn't bothered to tell HEVN, but the battered suitcase he'd hauled with him contained all his worldly possessions. When one lives the life of a serial killer (not a mass murderer, he'd point out to anyone who bothered to ask him before they met their violent end. The two are very different things, in truth), one doesn't really keep a steady place of residence for very long. Thank goodness for public bathhouses, at least. He had no idea how Americans could stand living without them.

He imagined that by this time, with this much rain, the floor of the warehouse would probably be flooded. He was beyond fully aware of the fact that most men would be counting their blessings to be sleeping in a warm bed, under a dry roof, next to an incredibly beautiful woman. The whole situation, however, just made Akabane's legs itchy. He hated staying in one place for too long, or the sensation that he might have "settled down". Of course, there was the old adage "you can run but you can't hide" to be considered, and after awhile of running, it becomes almost unnatural to sit still. There's a word for that sensation: inertia.

These were the thoughts that wandered through Akabane's mind as he suffered from insomnia. _Every time I close my eyes, the noise inside me amplifies. I can't escape…every misstep I have made finds a way it can invade… and this is why I find myself awake,_ as the song went. He wondered where he'd heard that song. Perhaps at one of the tattered clubs his clients had been inclined to frequent before he'd made enough of a name for himself to be recognized as one of the "elite" transporters, the ones you called when you wanted to show that your item was worth big money.

Sometime around midnight, Akabane and HEVN both finally managed to get to drift into broken, unfriendly dream worlds. Akabane found himself dreaming of a world where a disease had ravaged the cities, leaving only empty and soulless buildings that he wandered through, the last survivor, eternally alone. HEVN, on the other side of the bed, was dreaming about a great green dragon that was trying to burn down the Honky Tonk.

HEVN woke up when the alarm clock lying on the ground beside her began to beep in a shrill, annoying tone. She reached out from under the warm covers, her bare arm braving the chilly room to hit the snooze button. It was only when she reached out that she'd shifted in her sleep; the clock was no longer within arms reach. Huh, she was lying on something relatively solid, and yet slightly squishy… cotton fabric texture, perhaps? She didn't have a giant pillow, so she was confused. Sleepily, she lifted her head up- only to realize that somehow in her sleep, she'd manage to roll over on top of Akabane.

Akabane, apparently already awake, blinked at her and smiled in that cold, eyes-shut smile he'd perfected. "You looked so serene that I didn't want to wake you even after you rolled on me," he smirked.

HEVN shoved backwards, scooting to the other side of the room entirely on her backside. Her hair was practically sticking up on end with surprise, and her eyes were big and round as dinner plates. "I didn't mean to!" she stammered, clutching sheets over her night clothes. She was not thinking about how nice and warm his body was, she was not!

Akabane yawned and stretched out, ignoring both HEVN's giant eyes and the fact that the yukata he was using in place of pajamas was gaping and showing more of his flesh than HEVN cared to see. She covered her eyes lightly with one hand, in more of a I-am-not-amused gesture than an I-just-saw-your-man-thing gesture. "Pull that thing closed, will you?"

"Mmm, the tie seems to have come undone while I slept. Unless, you had a hand in it coming untied…"

"WHAT?" she asked, her hair once again shooting straight out and giving her an angry cat look. "I wouldn't! I didn't! I rolled on you by accident! You're a dirty, dirty…" It was about that point that she realized from the way he was smiling that he'd been kidding her. She made a disgruntled ugh sound and talked into the bathroom, leaving the smiling freak to himself.

When HEVN emerged from the bathroom, Akabane was busily doing some kind of off spin-off of push-ups. HEVN studied him for a moment before deciding it was best to just turn her back and pretend she didn't see him. Finally, after a good thirty seconds of listening to him quietly counting off numbers, she decided her curiosity was greater than her desire to ignore him. "What in the world are you doing?"

"Push-ups, they're good exercise and great for stress relief. You should try a few; you could use some distressing," he said, and she couldn't help but wonder if he'd intended it as a pun or not.

She snorted at his comment and went to picking the tangles out of her long hair with a comb. "Is it really that obvious?"

"You weren't yourself yesterday, and I can only imagine the stress of having to keep up appearances for your family is the cause."

"I think even a blind man could see that," she snapped, before realizing that if she'd said such a thing in front of Madoka, she'd probably be rather embarrassed. "What do you mean by I wasn't myself?"

He stopped doing the push-up routine and stretched out his back, cracking noises ripping down his spine as he twisted himself. "You were far less professional than usual. The HEVN I'm used to treats me with a sort of distant buisnesslyness, if you will, that I respect. She's not the sort to let personal opinions of others get in the way of her making a few bucks."

"Then the HEVN you're mentioning is still me, only this HEVN is after a more than just a few bucks. This HEVN is after the house, the car, the family business…"

"Understood," Akabane cut her off. "Do you wish me to dress myself in the bathroom?"

"What else would you do, strip right in the middle of the room in front of me?" she asked. Looking back and seeing that smile creeping across his face again, she raised one hand and pointed hastily at the bathroom. "Change in there, please."

While Akabane was still doing his beauty routine, HEVN and her sister discussed the day's plans. "So, what have you got planned for me today, my sister?" Marci purred. She was wearing a white summer dress that contrasted with HEVN's black pants and shirt combination nicely. Clifford looked like someone had shoved him in a closet to sleep, as his clothes were rumpled and creased. Akabane almost suspected that Clifford was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing yesterday. Of course, not that Akabane could really talk… he was just grateful that HEVN had a washing machine, and that no one could tell if he really changed clothes or not underneath his coat.

"I'm thinking of taking you to a few historical locations and-"

"Boooooring. Come on, sis, we went to those 'historical' dusty old temples when we were kids and they made us. We've only got a few more days to enjoy Japan for everything it's worth, save the education for someone who cares."

"Right. Where do you suggest we go?"

"How about that super-huge water park that just opened up?"

HEVN blinked. "Okay, first, you complain about having to go to a historical site, then you want to go to an amusement park that is based on the concept of hundreds of other amusement parks in the country you just came from?"

"Yes. Do you see a problem with that?" Marci asked, arms crossed.

"Mom and dad in swimsuits," was HEVN's short response.

Marci groaned. "Okay, you win. Take us somewhere 'historical,' but it better have a good gift shop."

Once again, there were too many people to fit in one taxi, and despite HEVN's insisting that it would be easier to just take the train, her father agreed to pour out the money to pay the drivers rather than have to be shoved in a tiny space with a bunch of people using mass transportation. For reasons Akabane would never understand in his natural lifetime, he was once again pushed in a car alone with Clifford, just staring at one another over the top of the language barrier.

In the other car, things were none the merrier. "You know, sister, I've noticed something odd about you and your boyfriend. You don't hold hands, or accidentally brush fingers and kind of smile about it, or any of those silly love things engaged couples do."

"Neither do you," HEVN pointed out, rather snappishly.

"That's because Clifford knows better than to potentially damage my manicure, and one time he touched my arm after I got my airbrushed tan touched up and his hands were brown for a week."

HEVN's sharp yellow eyes studied her sister. "And you're proud of that?" she asked.

"Girls, girls, don't fight," their mother pleaded. "What place were you taking us again, HEVN dear?"

"Marci and I compromised between historical site and water theme park. We're going to a waterfall."

"Which reminds me, I think your toilet was plugged when we left. I hope it doesn't run over," Marci smirked. It was a good thing the taxi driver was listening to bad Euro-pop CDS, because they drowned out the sound of HEVN's teeth grinding together in irritation. Her only consolation was that she knew that somewhere, deep down in Marci's cool exterior, the driver's choice of music was making her cry on the interior.

Due to a strange anomaly in traffic, Clifford and Akabane's taxi arrived a good ten minutes before the taxi carrying the rest of the family. When HEVN found them, they were standing inside a small convenience store and souvenir stand. Clifford was waving a pack of candy in Akabane's face and very slowly saying "In my country, we call these Skittles." HEVN didn't know if it was worth pointing out that the writing on the box essentially did say Skittles in Japanese (or as close as Japanese can get to the word Skittles), but figured that of all people who should understand branding in an international market, a businessman like Clifford should.

"Stop acting like he's an idiot because you speak English," she snapped.

"I thought they taught that language in high school."

"Yes, and they teach Spanish in American high schools. How many Americans do you know who speak Spanish well enough to count as half-fluent?"

"Quite a few, actually."

"Take out the ones whose families speak Spanish."

"Ummm…."

"Case in point."

"Right, the sooner we look at a bunch of water falling off a rock, the sooner we can go home." Marci commented.

"I've tried to explain six times in the car, Marci. It's not a natural waterfall, it's a man-made sculpture of falling water surrounded by a garden of rare and beautiful flowers that's supposed to symbolize the diversity of life itself," HEVN sighed, rubbing her head to try to make the throbbing veins go away.

"It just looks like a giant pe-"

"Marci!" Hevn snapped, cutting her sister off in mid-word. "Here, have a guide book to the diversity of plants," she snapped, shoving a small booklet into her sister's hand.

Marci snorted, thumbing through the poorly printed pages. "I can't remember half of these kanji. Or maybe I didn't know them in the first place, seeing as how they're probably the names of some plants that all look alike. I mean, what's the purpose of flowers if they're in dirt instead of floral arrangements from boyfriends?"

A single large sweat drop had appeared on HEVN's head. "Ladies and gentlemen, my sister, the ultimate materialist."

"She's hardly anything compared to some of the Yakuza brides I've met," Akabane shrugged, sucking on a yellow Popsicle.

HEVN looked up at him and frowned. "Where did you get that popsicle? You didn't have it a half minute ago."

"A child tried to stick it to me. He said something about my hat being stupid. I believe that child will now need expensive therapy for the rest of his life," Akabane answered calmly, licking at the ice treat.

"And you're eating it?" HEVN asked, her head dropping with the absolute stupidity of the situation. Tears streamed out of her eyes. "I'm… I'm surrounded by insanity. That's it. Not one person in my life is sane."

HEVN and Marci's mother nudged their father. "Just look at our children. Eating ice cream treats or whispering quietly with loved ones in a gorgeous flower garden. Isn't young love just beautiful?"

In truth, Marci and Clifford were trying to figure out if there was a way to push HEVN over the side of the artistic waterfall, and whether or not the drop was actually great enough to do more than just break her wrist.

HEVN wiped her eyes. "Okay, even if _you_ are being difficult, _I'm_ willing to make this 'engagement' work. Now hold my hand as we walk through the garden."

"I don't think you want-" Akabane's words came too late, and HEVN already had a firm grip on his hand. At that moment, however, she was beginning to realize that sticky Popsicle leavings had trickled down Akabane's gloves and those sticky bits of juice were now all over her hands. To top it off, there wasn't a water fountain or hand washing station in sight.

"Why didn't you tell me your hands were sticky?" she asked, trying to keep from starting to weep again. She'd actually been looking forward to holding a man's hand, not that she'd admit it, and she got… a sticky toddler hand in its place.

"I was going to, but you grabbed me before I could. At least, with your family about, I'm not bored enough to do something that would later be regarded as an international incident."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, turning around to see what Akabane was looking at. "MARCI! Get off the sculpture!"

"Oh, hush! We're going to take the picture quickly! Won't it look good, with me in this dress and the water in cascades behind me?" she asked, striking a pose on the safety fence.

"Security will kick us out if they see you up there! Get down!" HEVN pleaded, running up to where her sister was standing on the fence.

"We'll take it quickly and- AH! BEE!" Marci screamed, flailing her arms as a small and rather non-threatening insect flew past her. In her flailing, HEVN watched in slow motion horror-o-vision as her sister's foot slipped backwards on the wet railing. She reached out, her arms seeming to also move in slow motion, realizing that she wouldn't reach her sister in time no matter how earnestly she wanted to.

With a loud splash, Marci fell backwards and several feet down into the basin of the statue. "Marci!" Clifford cried, shoving HEVN aside as he ran to the fence that was intended to keep tourists from doing that very thing. "Marci, Marci! Are you okay?" By that time, several other concerned visitors had rushed to the fence as well to see if the toppled girl was okay.

They were met with a loud, high-pitched, and incredibly shrill scream. "My sister is hurt!" HEVN cried, genuinely concerned. "I'll call an ambulance," she shouted, sweating with nervousness, hitting the wrong buttons on her phone.

Akabane placed his hands over hers. "Stop," he said gently. "That wasn't a scream of pain."

"Wasn't a scream of pain? My sister fell into the fountain! It's a steep drop!" she shouted at him, perhaps bordering more on the hysterical than she should have for how deep the drop truly was.

"Yes, but… perhaps I should say it wasn't a scream of physical pain. Do you remember what your sister was wearing when she fell into a fountain full of water?"

"A… white… sundress…" HEVN said slowly, beginning to get the picture.

A half hour later and a few talks to the security guards, HEVN sat next to Akabane on a bench. "Thank you more than I can say for loaning your coat to my sister until her dress dried."

"It wasn't a problem. I've always been a gentleman at heart," he answered. "Tell me again why the two of us were cordially not invited to dinner tonight, despite my kindness?"

"I think it had to do with the fact that we took a picture _before_ we helped my sister out of the fountain. I don't see why that would be a problem, though; she had everything covered."

"Perhaps that is it. She might not have had to go through the security interrogation if we hadn't stopped to do that."

"When do you think the taxi I called will arrive?" she asked, swinging her legs. "We've been waiting a terribly long time for it."

"Yes, and yet the inside of my coat is still wet," Akabane frowned, turning the coat over so the setting sun would continue to shine on it and hopefully dry it out. HEVN turned her attention away from him, and towards the tones of reds and yellows fading to orange across the sky.

"It's really beautiful, isn't it?" she asked, staring up at the sky over the tops of skyscraping office buildings and high rise luxury apartments. "Even in spite of the fact that we spent most of the day waiting for security to release my sister."

"I prefer sunrises over sunsets, myself. I see more of them because of the hours my job requires. Mornings just seem more right than nights, at any rate. It's quiet when the city hasn't woken up yet, whereas at night people are just beginning to rush off to clubs, theaters, whatever they want to get done before their day job takes them over again."

"Most people who prefer mornings like them because they're fresh starts. A new, clean slate to work with. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life any everything."

Akabane drew his legs up so he could rest his head on his knees. "That assumes that what you wrote on the slate yesterday didn't leave any residue, and that others are willing to also wipe their slates instead of piling up perceived indignities over time."

"Hmmm…." HEVN said, leaning back on the bench. "But, a slate that is never wiped clean becomes an incomprehensible garble," she retorted, glancing over at him. Akabane was playing with his hair, twisting it between his fingers. He'd been playing with one of his knives earlier, twitching it repeatedly in and out of his hand. She hadn't really noticed it before, but both were nervous ticks generally done by bored, fidgety people. If there was one thing HEVN knew she definitely didn't want, however, it was to be around Akabane when he was bored. "Akabane-san, how long have we been sitting here, waiting for a taxi? It's been here so long we've become vaguely philosophical."

He made a noise that indicated he was amused by her comment. "I believe it's been close to an hour."

"Should I just call Ban and offer to pay him to drive us back? Or at least call the taxi company and ask them what's taking so long?"

"I would call the taxi company first. Calling your friend Ban, while amusing, would probably require a lot of explanations you are honestly too stressed to give right now. Wait, perhaps that won't be necessary. Here comes one now."

HEVN sat promptly upright. "Is that for us?" she asked.

"Let's see if it slows down?"

"It's slowing, it's stopping… yes!" HEVN shouted, punching the air. "Come on, hurry before it drives away."

Akabane hastily gathered up his still damp-coat and followed HEVN to the taxi. She was honestly grateful it had arrived right when it had, as she didn't want to deal with Akabane's strange behaviors.

She noticed him wrinkle his nose when they entered the cab, mainly because the wrinkle lines that formed between his eyebrows had a kind of cute quality to them. Wait, did she honestly think that… about Akabane? HEVN smacked herself on the face lightly with the palm of one slender hand. Heat stroke, yes, that was it… she'd gotten heat stroke while sitting and waiting for the taxi.

If she hadn't been distracted by her tangent, she might have remembered Akabane's initial reaction and asked him about it. There was the scent of blood in the cab, and though Akabane knew strange things happened frequently in cabs as he'd been the cause of many strange incidents himself, it bothered him. The taxi was incredibly late, then finally showed up with the faint scent of blood in it? He could also detect cleaning fluid recently applied, and the blood-scent was surprisingly fresh.

To HEVN, he said nothing. If the driver was up to no good, all the better for him. The last few days had been terribly boring, after all… An unintentional smile crossed his face. Perhaps he'd finally get some entertainment after all.


	5. Taxi

A/N: Continuity note! I'm changing HEVN to Hevn because even though it's a code name and I think it's supposed to be in all caps, I'm tired of writing it that way and Hevn seems more natural.

It's my story so deal.

Hevn blinked and looked about. "I think this driver is trying to charge us extra."

Akabane, looking half-asleep, opened one violet eye to peer at Hevn. "What makes you say that, Hevn-san?"

"The fact that we're driving along a mountainous road, but we don't need to take any to get back to my apartment," she answered, looking concernedly out at the sky rapidly fading to black.

Akabane yawned and stretched. "Isn't it obvious, dear Hevn-san? We've been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?!" Hevn shouted, practically jumping out of her seat. "What the hell do you mean by that?"

Akabane turned his attention away from her and to the driving, smiling broadly. "Isn't it true, driver-san? You're one of the ones who was attacking Miss Mediator in the back alley of the restaurant, aren't you?"

The driver suddenly jerked, his shoulders rising up in an expression of being caught by surprise. That was all the answer Hevn needed to know that they were on the right track. "Do something!" she shouted, boarding on overly hysterical.

"What should I do? Kill the driver? That would be inadvisable on this road, seeing as how we'd be sailing off the side of the mountain before either of us could take control of the cab from his body."

Of course, by that time, the driver was sweating bullets and shaking. They weren't supposed to catch on to the fact that he was driving them to his gang until _after_ he was out of the car, and yet the black-haired man in the back were discussing the kidnap situation as calmly as though he were discussing what he'd had for lunch.

The blonde was another case, however. "How do you know he won't just dive off the side of the mountain if he thinks you're going to kill him in the end anyway?" she screamed.

"You shouldn't say such things, Hevn-san, it might give him ideas."

Unfortunately by that time, it had given the driver an idea and he had indeed come to the conclusion that he'd rather take his chances jumping out of the taxi careening down a mountainside than face the scalpel-maniac. Hevn screamed involuntarily when she heard the crunch of metal against metal as the fender tore through the safety railing, sending the taxi on a dangerous bounce down the side of the mountain. The only saving grace at the moment, though Hevn was too distraught to realize it, was that the slope they were on at the moment was gentle enough that the car could continue to roll down it. However, the slope didn't last forever, and ended in a sharp several thousand foot plummet to the bottom.

The moment Hevn realized that the drop off existed and began to scream about it was the exact same moment that Akabane, who had remained eerily calm through the entire "about to fall off the side of a mountain" incident, began to move towards the door. Her eyes wide, she could see nothing but the cliff approaching. She didn't even feel a gloved-arm wrap around her chest as she was pulled out of the car, tumbling through brush and the shards of broken beer bottles.

She barely heard the distant sound of metal being thrown apart when the taxi hit the bottom of the valley. She also barely smelled the scent of gasoline and smoke drifting through the air. Down below, a half dozen people on cellular phones were already calling the police to report seeing a taxi sail off the side of the high-rise road.

"Hevn-san? Hevn-san, are you conscious?" she heard a familiar voice ask. Her head spinning, she managed to sit up, and for a moment was convinced she was in the company of three Akabanes.

He smiled brightly at her. "I was afraid that throwing you out of the taxi might have killed you, but it doesn't look like you even suffered a concussion."

It took a moment for Hevn to decide her reaction. Shock? Panic? Joy over not being dead? No… hysteria seemed appropriate at the moment, she thought, bursting into tears from the sheer stress of the situation.

"Hevn-san?" Akabane asked, tipping his head as he looked at her in genuine confusion.

"You… why did you wait until the last possible second to jump?" she asked between gasped chokes. She didn't want to be crying, but she couldn't stop her body. After all, she'd almost died, and he was acting like her reaction was something abnormal.

"It is more dramatic that way," he answered with a shrug.

Hevn was really certain what happened next. Her hand began to move on her own, and she watched in horror as it swung upward. No, no, no, her mind was screaming, but her emotions were stronger than the power of her mind. Her emotions were angry, afraid, and just wanted to take it out on something, and the nearest thing was…

The sound of the impact seemed deafening alone, sitting in the brush along the side of the road. She was froze into place, her arm not moving, her body shaking and heaving from the fact that she was hyperventilating.

Akabane didn't move either, although his head was turned slightly more to the side than it had been. She'd struck him, openly, with her palm against his check. Neither of them now dared move, like two armies stuck in a precarious checkmate.

Eventually, still not turning back to look at her, Akabane just flatly replied "If you'd look further up the hill, you'd realize that it's all rocks up there, and dirt down here. You'd likely have internal bleeding if I'd jumped onto those rocks."

Hevn finally drew her hand back, still shaking and gasping. It was almost like hitting him and turned on some internal switch. He wasn't moving, wasn't looking at her with that cold smile of his, wasn't doing… wasn't doing anything. She thought for sure he'd have at least struck her back, or attacked her with blades, or done something. Instead, his tone of voice had just become cold and factual, losing the earlier half-joking edge that it usually had. "We should get going before we are involved in an unpleasant police interrogation about the cause of the crash."

She got to her feet and stumbled after him, crashing through the brush as he easily moved through it like a ghost. Heck, she wouldn't be surprised to catch up to him in a clearing and discover that he was floating a few centimeters above the ground. She followed the slight swish-swish of his coat through the underbrush, neither of them speaking or making any noise beyond the sound of Hevn stumbling through the undergrowth.

"I didn't mean to," she said suddenly, trying to keep the tears stinging her eyes from starting to fall again. "I know you saved my life. I was just so frustrated and scared, and then you made that comment… it just… I had to hit something. I'm sorry, okay? I never apologize to anyone, but I'm sorry."

He didn't answer, which was worse for the way Hevn was feeling than if he'd said something horrible to her. She realized that he _was_ cutting at her, but not with any physical instrument. He was letting her guilt do it for him.

She stumbled in a hole and fell with a slight gasp, twisting her already bruised ankle further. She didn't cry, however. The time for emotional crying was over. The time to get back to the road and back to her apartment to nurse her internal wounds was on.

He actually hesitated and looked back at her, although she couldn't tell where his eyes were focused because of the shadows cast by her hat. "Can you walk?" he asked.

She struggled back to her feet and immediately went down again on the bad ankle. He fully turned around and came back, mechanically offering an arm out to her.

Stubbornly, she turned her face away from the gesture. "Keep your pity for yourself," she snapped, forcing herself back onto her feet. Damn it, she had to keep relying on others to save her. Not just Ban and Ginji, no… Himiko, too. Must she be the delicate princess in need of a hero forever?

"Don't be stubborn; you'll never make it back on that ankle."

"Then go on ahead without me and leave me to die," she snapped, looking at the tri-color mess her ankle was swelling into.

Akabane, not in a good mood and not wanting to deal with it, walked straight over to HEVN, gripped her firmly by the wrist, and threw her over his shoulder like she were a sack of laundry. "Hey, put me down!" she shouted, wriggling in his grip.

"My things happen to be locked in your apartment, so I'd appreciate if I could collect them. Then you can die however you want."

After only about five minutes of screaming, kicking, and insisting that he put her down Hevn fully realized that she wasn't getting anywhere with Akabane and just hung limply off his shoulder. About twenty minutes later, she finally spoke. "I feel like an idiot like this."

No answer from him, so she just kept on talking. It was better than the dead silence and the slight panting of his breath from having to carry her weight around. "I don't blame you if you just grab your things and take off. I should have been honest with my parents in the first place, rather than forcibly dragging you into it. Your dignity and my integrity aren't worth what I've paid you, or even what I'd get from my parents." She sighed, hanging limply. "I guess I have more to be sorry for than just being an ingrate to the person who saved me."

"In all honesty," he sighed finally, "I'm probably the one to blame for that assassination attempt in the first place. I have more enemies willing to go to extreme lengths to kill me than you do."

"Considering some of the jobs I've gotten for Ban and Ginji, that may not exactly be true… Geez, sit down for a minute at least if you're going to be stubborn enough to insist on carrying me the whole way. You sound like you're going to give yourself a heart attack."

"I have carried heavier things further."

She snorted. "What did you used to be into, backpacking? If you have a heart attack, I've got a bum ankle. I can't walk back to civilization without you. It's in my best interests if you sit, if you want me to use logic similar to your own."

He finally gave in and sat down when they reached a small, battered bus stop. Hevn examined the schedule while standing on her one good foot. "Too bad there's not a bus until six this morning; I'd kind of like to get home." She picked up her cellular phone. "Out of range, I hope Marci isn't calling me to try to get back into the apartment." She looked over at Akabane, who was resting in a corner of the shelter. "You really _are_ going to have a heart attack," she said, noticing the fine layer of sweat on his skin. "You can at least loosen your tie and shirt…" she reached out and he jerked away from her.

"You really are a stubborn jackass," she snapped. "Hold still!" she cried, loosening the knot.

"Or what? You'll hit me again?" he asked.

There was a tense moment where they just stared at one another, and then Hevn found herself involuntarily giggling. She didn't want to, but she was. It's hard to resist laughing in the presence of someone else laughing, so within a few moments, they were both laughing uproariously about a joke that neither of them found funny in the least.

"I'm sorry, I guess I am under a lot of stress," she yawned, sitting back and fanning herself with an ad paper pulled off the side of the shelter. She'd undone the first few buttons on his shirt as well while she'd been playing with his tie, fearing that he'd give himself heat stroke under all those layers of clothes. "How do you stand those things in summer?" she asked. "I can barely stand wearing pants this time of year."

"It's easier to do when working at night, I suppose. I like looking this way."

"I could tell you liked your hat, at the very least. You continued to wear it even after it got torn, after all…"

"Stupid sentimentality," he shrugged, brushing off her observation.

"Tell me what's sentimental about a hat," she urged. She really was curious why he maintained that almost freakish attachment to the damned thing.

"I'd rather not."

"You're no fun at all," she said, leaning back. "Would you tell me if we were playing truth or dare?"

"Mmm… I might."

"Fine, then let's play. Truth or dare," she said, looking threateningly into his eyes.

He looked back at her without expression. "I think we'd better start walking again."

"I'll only start walking back if you let me lean on you. We'll never make it if you keep trying to carry me," she snapped, and he eventually agreed. Truth was, he was glad to have her off his back. She was making his joints hurt.

Hevn checked her cellular phone when they finally made it back to her apartment and flopped, exhausted from the trip and having to try to run down another taxi in the middle of the night. "That's odd," she said, looking over her messages. "My sister hasn't called me about getting into the apartment yet tonight, and it's long past last call…"

Akabane, also sprawled out from a combination of exhaustion and how hot the night was, looked over at her. "Perhaps she got a hotel room after all."

"Her things are here, though, and unless she's wearing that sundress two days in a row…"

"She could buy new clothes to wear at any store," he argued.

"But she left her Italian imported beauty supplies here, too. There's no way in heck she'd use hotel soap, and I doubt any all night stores sell it in this part of the world. It's hard enough to get mail-order imported to America."

"Do you think something happened to her, and you're trying to round-about ask if I feel the same way?" he asked, looking over at her and hitting the nail on the head at the same time.

"Yea… as much as we fight, I'm worried," Hevn said, shutting her cell phone gently.

He squirmed up into a sitting position. "Do you feel well enough to go looking for her?"

"Not really, and there's the problem," she answered, moving the ice pack around on her ankle. She wouldn't be walking normal for days, let alone the short time they'd been home. "Marci's a big girl and she's with Clifford; I'm sure she managed to take care of herself." She looked over at him, half-propped up and looking like he was ready to fall asleep at the blink of an eye. "Truth or dare, Akabane-san."

He eyed her in confusion. "Truth or dare," she urged. "I mean it this time."

"If I pick truth, you'll ask me about my hat again," he yawned, rolling onto his side.

"So pick dare, if you don't want to answer."

He waved her off with one gloved hand. "Fine, fine, I pick dare."

Hevn frowned. "You're really _that_ determined not to tell me anything about your dumb hat?"

"Yes, because it bothers you."

"I knew that was the reason," she answered, throwing a pillow at him. "Fine, since you're going to be stubborn…" she mused, trying to think of a good middle-school style dare. "I dare you to make a prank phone call!"

He rolled back over and looked at her as though she'd just suggested that he wijamibob while prancanfancing. "You know, prank phone calls? Hello, is your refrigerator running? Well you'd better go catch it? Ring a bell?" She could tell from the blank stare he was giving her that it didn't. "Didn't you ever have fun in middle school?"

"Keep in mind; I was never a middle-school _girl_," he answered.

She tossed her phone at him. "You just call someone up, and ask them to do something stupid."

Akabane stared at the phone, then dialed a few numbers. "Hello? Ginji-kun? Did I wake you? I wanted to ask you if you could-"

Hevn snatched the phone out of his hands and hung up. "You're not supposed to call people you _know_, stupid. That takes all the fun out of it!"

Many tries later, Hevn gave up on the idea of teaching Akabane how to make a prank phone call. However, he wasn't ready to let the subject drop. "I get to ask you for a Truth or Dare now, correct, if I understand how this game is played?"

"I guess it's only fair," she shrugged. "Since I take it your idea of a dare would be less benevolent than mine, I'll take truth."

"I am going to ask you something my co-workers have always wanted to know." He pointed directly at her chest. "Are those real?"

She stuttered, face turning brilliant red. "Yes, of course they're real, and to whoever asked, it's none of their business!"

"Isn't it dangerous to wear a real diamond necklace in Shinjuku?" he asked brightly.

Hevn just sat there, staring at him, for a good five minutes, then actually burst out laughing again. "See, if you could have just done THAT on the phone, you could have had an excellent prank call on your hands."

He feigned genuine confusion. "I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about, Miss Mediator."

"Please, call me Hevn. All my friends do."

He raised an eyebrow. "So you are my… friend now?"

She was caught a bit off-guard by that. Would she go as far as to say that about him? Her gut instinct was to say no, but the way he was looking at her suggested that she might earnestly step on some feelings if she told him the truth.

Hell, she'd lied enough that week. What would one more lie hurt. "Yeah… I guess you are." She took a deep breath. Well, there was one thing she could do that would definitely tell her how she really felt about him, and she was feeling just gusty enough to do it after having slapped him and survived it earlier in the night. "Hey, Akabane-san, you want to try a dare?"

"A dare?" he asked, mentally noting that despite her claims to friendship she still attached the san to his name, meaning she wasn't comfortable shortening it up to even plain Akabane. It was in that moment that he knew she was lying about saying that she genuinely considered him a friend, but he honestly wasn't hurt by it as much as anyone else probably would have been. No one considered Akabane their friend, and Akabane considered no one his friend. It worked that way.

"I want you to… to…" she said nervously, leaning in closer to him. Right at that moment, when she was about to blurt out what she wanted… her cell phone rang. Sighing heavily, she answered it. "What?" she asked.

"Hevn, sister? Why haven't you been answering your phone?"

To Be Continued… (yeah, I know, odd spot to leave off but I like it!)


	6. Mommy, that man drew on himself

A/N: Someone mentioned an Akabane-plush in their review, so I felt obligated to TRY to post a link to the site where I have pictures of my Akabane plush and the 12-inch Akabane doll. Put shandyevians. deviantart. com into your browser (no www) and remove the spaces.

Insert space break here.

Marci hung up the phone, manicured finger curling so tightly around the small international cellular that the tips began to turn white. "Why… is… my… sister… still… alive?" she asked between flamed pants.

Clifford put his cigarette out and observed Marci's hate-filled eyes. "You know, dear, I believe we've been going about getting rid of your sister all wrong."

Marci looked up, thin lips pouted outward. "What do you mean by that?" she sneered at the calm-faced young man.

Clifford studied the smoke rings coming off the ashtray. "Even if we kill your sister, it's likely that our dabbles in the family funds will be discovered some time in the future. So, wouldn't it make sense to dispose of your sister in a way that implicates her for the thefts?"

"I like the way you think," Marci said after a moment of contemplation, sliding onto Clifford's lap and slipping a finger between the buttons of his business shirt. "Tell me, pussycat, how we're going to do just that."

He smiled in response, pressing a finger to her lips. "Ssssh, sssh. If I told you the plan, you might get nervous about it and do something that would tip your sister off. Let me handle this. I'm used to death, after all."

"Right. I'll call the gang and let them know that they are no longer of use to us," she said, manicured fingers pressing down on the buttons of her cellular.

Akabane, unable to sleep, sat curled up in a corner with his head on his knees. He envied Hevn, who had practically collapsed into sleep the minute she'd heard safely from her sister. "Wake me up when my sister calls up from the lobby," she yawned, and then was out like a light bulb. Feeling more than a little bit irritated at being the one who had to sit up and wait for the phone call (well, you said you weren't tired, had been Hevn's logic behind it) he spent his time doodling little pictures in the dust on the floor under the dresser.

A small phone began ringing, drawing him out of whatever he might have been thinking to himself. It was coming from his jacket. Padding quietly and barefoot across the wooden floor, he dug his phone out of his jacket and flipped it open. Funny, he could still hear the ringing and it wasn't his phone… wait a second, there was a second phone in his jacket.

He pulled a small, ugly blue phone out of the other pocket of his jacket. He'd taken it from the body of their former driver while Hevn had laid unconscious in the dirt, fully intending that it might eventually lead him back to the person who had ordered the attempts on their lives in the first place. If it was ringing, all the better from him.

So, he answered it. "Hello?"

"Hello? Can I speak to Tsuki?" a woman's voice asked. Akabane frowned, narrowing his eyes slightly. He knew that voice, and it made feelings of wanting to kill run down his back… but where? Where did he know that voice from?

"Speaking," he shortly answered.

"Tsuki? Can you please inform your boss that his services are no longer needed? We've hired someone else to remove the thorn from our sides."

"The thorn?" he asked, hoping that his simple question would prompt the woman on the other end of the line to tell him whether he or Hevn was truly their target.

"Yes. We'll take care of it ourselves," the woman answered, and then the phone line went dead. Akabane looked down at it, then pulled up the call log and traced down the number shown in the most recently received call log. It was better than nothing at all to go on. He stepped back over Hevn, borrowing her little Dell laptop to search the internet for a reverse phone number look up. It was a good idea, but unfortunately, it got him no where. The phone number was either unlisted or a cellular, and Akabane was willing to guess it was a cellular, which wouldn't show up in his searches.

Calling them back immediately would only make them suspicious, and possibly cut off the only link he had to finding them in the end, so he shut down the phone and placed it back in his pocket. Lacking a way to recharge it, he only had until its batteries died to use it to trace the person who had ordered the attempted assassinations.

He needed a cigarette. Judging from the fact that Hevn herself didn't seem to smoke, he politely took his addiction out onto the balcony. At least he wasn't as bad as Ban-chan. That man always seemed to have one hanging off of his lips. I miss them, he thought bitterly to himself. He'd agreed to help Hevn because he'd thought it would bring him closer to fighting the two of them, but he hadn't seen even a blade of hair of either of them the whole time.

Marci, walking beneath the balcony with Clifford, paused and looked up. A smirk crossed her painted mouth. "He's not bad looking without his shirt," she commented.

Clifford, looking up, frowned when he saw what Marci was looking at. "If you like that skinny, half-starved anorexic look, ugh."

"Jealous, Clifford?" she asked, continuing to smirk as she looked over at him. "I'd like to wrap my legs around that pretty little thing, if only long enough to break my sister's heart."

"Why don't you?" Clifford asked. "It's not like we really _love_ one another, and removing him from the equation would make your sister all the easier to get rid of."

Marci took her own cigarette back from Clifford. "We'll see how the mood moves me, sweetie."

Yawning, Hevn buzzed her sister into the apartment building. She was a bit annoyed, as her sister had shouted at her for letting the phone ring so long before answering. Damn it, she'd asked Akabane to wake her if she didn't hear the phone. Where the heck was he? She wandered back into her bedroom in time to see him shutting the balcony door and pick up the glass of water he'd been sipping listlessly at earlier. She was going to yell at him for wandering off, then decided it was in her best interests not to. "I'm going to bed again," she said shortly, crawling under the covers.

"What about your sister?" he asked. He stank, so she figured he'd probably just been out smoking.

"She's back," Hevn yawned, pulling the sheets up over her head. "Could you shower before you go to sleep? You smell."

His first instinct was to say no, because he was tired of being ordered about by her like she was queen on a throne when he was really doing her a favor. Unconsciously, he slammed the glass down in frustration, causing it to shatter against the desk. Small shards of broken glass cut against his skin, drawing drops of red blood from thin scratches.

He lifted his hand and studied the cuts. Damn, now he'd have to take a shower to avoid getting an infection in the cuts. Sucking on the wounds in painful irritation, he left the glistening bits of glass on the desk where he'd broken it and wandered into the bathroom. The brilliant overhead lights hurt his eyes, tempting him to reach up and unscrew half the bulbs. Honestly, no one needed a bathroom that bright, even if she did have to apply makeup in the morning.

The water was bitterly cold, but Akabane didn't care. He liked the cold. It woke him up, making him shiver. He found his hands trailing up to his face for what seemed like the millionth time that night. Sure, he'd been hit far harder than that in battle… but Hevn's slap hurt. It wasn't like any battle wound he'd experienced in fighting before. No one had struck him like that in… years. He couldn't believe he was having a hard time processing something as small as being slapped in the face by a single, unarmed woman when he'd never had any trouble dealing with suffering dozens of multiple stab wounds simultaneously, or having his arms yanked out of their sockets, or any of the other battle wounds he'd survived.

Marci stepped into the room, and noticing the shower was running but her sister's blonde hair was flowing out of the bed. Her smile tight but broad-lipped, she slipped out of her pajamas and wrapped a single terrycloth towel around her waist. The towel barely covered everything it should, which is exactly how she wanted it. Time to seduce my sister's boyfriend, she smiled to herself.

Fate, however, happened to have a very odd sense of humor when it came to dealings with Akabane and Hevn. Hevn happened to awaken right as Marci was gripping the bathroom door knob. "Marci?" Hevn grunted. "Can I use the bathroom before you start to shower?" she asked. "Or is Clifford already in there?"

Marci blinked, trying to feign innocence. "Of course not, sister. I was just warming up the water. Go right inside." Marci smiled to herself, thinking that this should tell me if that man really is Hevn's fiancé or not. If I hear a scream of surprise, they're not.

Hevn yawned, stretching as she entered the bathroom. She really did have to go. Akabane, meanwhile, didn't hear the door opening because he was lost in washing his cuts and listening to the pounding sound of the water against his back.

About to open the lid, Hevn happened to glance up. What was that mark on the shower curtain? She squinted, letting her tired eyes focus, and was horrified to discover the mark on the curtain was a bloody handprint.

"Oh my god… Akabane-san!" she screamed, pulling back the curtain and fully expecting to find a bloody corpse in her shower.

Instead, there was the moment of recognition when she realized Akabane was not only unharmed, but fully alive, and staring back at her. The moment of recognition when she realized that she'd interrupted him in the middle of a shower… totally naked… came later.

"I'msorryIsawthebloodandthoughtyouwerehuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurt!" she cried, yanking the curtain shut again and running out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Akabane, when he got over the initial shock of the surprise, didn't react like he would be expected to. Instead, he smiled, then laughed in a voice barely louder than a whisper. The look on Hevn's face as her blood had drained out, leaving her as white as a ghost, was worth any "humiliation" he might be expected to feel at her having seen him naked.

He didn't have body issues after all, unashamed of the scars that crossed his chest and legs. He'd been told it was strange for him not to mind others seeing his marks, as most of the people he knew went to great lengths to hide the marks of the frailty of their flesh, even paying exorbitant sums of money to have the color drained out of their scar tissue so it would be less obvious. Why did they insist it was so wrong of him to be proud of the signatures of things that hadn't killed him, but had only made him stronger?

Hevn, meanwhile, was pacing about and practically hyperventilating. Could this day possibly get any worse? There was no way in heck he was going to continue playing her little game if she first hit him, then walked in on him in the shower and yanked the curtain open seemingly without a thought.

He had to bite his lip to avoid laughing when he finally left the bathroom, wrapped in his summer yukata again. He wanted to be the first one to bring the subject up, but he was afraid he'd start laughing and ruin the illusion of his normally cold, indifferent exterior. Showing emotions outwardly... well, it really wasn't his thing, if she hadn't noticed.

Hevn, still awake, refused to look him in the face. "I'm sorry, I saw the bloody handprint and I thought you were hurt."

The humor in the situation seemed to drain out with her statement. "You were seriously afraid that I might have been hurt?" he asked, confused. Why would she be concerned about him, as little as she seemed to like him?

"Of course I was! I saw blood and thought that the guys who were after us had gotten to you. I mean… if you saw blood on the shower curtain, wouldn't you be worried?"

"I'm used to seeing blood," was the only answer he gave her, a very unsatisfying one.

Hevn rolled onto her chest as best she could with her massive breasts, folding her arms beneath her head. "Just… just get into bed, okay?"

"No."

She started, then lifted her head back up. "What did you say?"

"I said no. I'm tired of you ordering me around when I'm doing you a favor."

Hevn smirked, trying to hide the small bits of panic that were slipping into her mind. Was this it? Was he going to walk out on her? "Where do you think you're going to sleep, then? Marci and Clifford have the couch, and the bathtub is still wet from your shower…"

"I'll sleep on the balcony if I have to," he replied, stubbornly and indignantly dragging a pair of sheets out onto the balcony and preparing a mock sleeping bag with them.

Hevn signed after him, shaking her head. "You're going to freeze out there."

"I don't mind," he shrugged, wrapping himself in the sheets and seemingly going to sleep.

Hevn could do nothing but stare at his back for what seemed like an eternity after that. He was so… so damned stubborn! Being angry at him for being stubborn helped her not think about the fact that even she knew she was unfairly bossing him around. Perhaps giving him some space would keep him from snapping and slaughtering her in a bloody mess, and that was a good thing.

Sometime around four in the morning, the forgotten need to use the potty resurfaced, causing Hevn to yawn and wobble into the bathroom. She sighed when she emerged, eyes squinting as she tried to adjust from going to the brilliant lights of the living room to the darkness of her bedroom. She could just make out Akabane's black and tan form lying spread on the balcony. "He's going to freeze," she muttered, dragging another blanket out of the closet and dragging it over to drape over his shivering body.

About a half hour later, Akabane himself finally gave up and dragged himself back into the apartment, having realized that he couldn't stay asleep if he kept waking up to rub his goose bumps away. This doesn't mean the fact that Hevn had placed another blanket on him was lost to him. However, it really did nothing more than confuse him, as she seemed to alter between ordering him around like a naughty puppy that had been caught piddling on the carpet, and showing genuine concern for his health and warm affection.

It would make his life a hundred or more percent easier if she'd just hurry up and decide if she liked him or not. Even if it turned out she hated him, his earlier comments about his own feelings about him didn't change. She didn't treat him like a bastard, or shrivel up like something foul had just entered the room when she saw him, or make snide comments about what a monster he was when behind his back but still within his earshot. Until that week she'd been nothing but professional towards him, and he'd always respected that about her.

Hevn shivered when a practically frozen body snuggled into the warmed sheets beside her. "You're cold," she groaned, her voice raspy from being half awake.

"I know," he answered, not moving from his spot.

Her first inclination was to say that she told him to come inside, or to order him out of the bed, but she let the comment die in her head. She didn't want to push him any further than she already had, as she wasn't quite sure how deep the nerve that marked his breaking point lay, and she'd gone into him pretty far.

Then, without warning, he said something that threw her completely for a loop. "Hevn-san, when all is said and done even if you do like ordering me around, you're still a very attractive woman, and usually relatively good-natured. Why don't you have a real boyfriend?"

For some reason, even in her sleepy condition, she answered him honestly. "When your previous fiancé gets shot, then turns out to be a spy from another country sabotaging the work you and he put your hearts into, you don't open up again to another man." She rolled over so she was facing his back, as his face was turned away from her. "So, what's your story? Where's your significant other?" she asked.

He didn't answer, causing Hevn to frown and let out an irritated low growl. "I answered your question, why can't you answer one of mine?" she asked angrily. His breathing remained steady and even as though he were asleep, but she knew he really wasn't. Finally sighing with resignation, she surrendered and fell back into her sheets to sleep.

The next morning, Hevn planed out the day's activities. Akabane had a job that night, so she'd have to take care of her parents and sister without his presence. That was fine with Hevn, after all, it wasn't like she'd ever needed him around before. She could entertain her family just fine without him.

That still left the daytime to drag him around. Akabane woke up sometime around ten, and not having to leave for his job until six, staggered out into the kitchen half-undressed, grabbed a bowl of cereal, and slithered back into the bedroom giving only vague grunts of recognition to anyone who tried to talk to him.

"He's not a morning person," Hevn, who had been up for an hour at that point, apologized to her still pajama-clad sister.

"It's okay, neither were you back in high school."

Hevn furrowed her brow, a vein appearing in her head. "How would you know? You went to high school in America; I went here in Japan."

"Auntie would often mention how she couldn't wake you for anything."

"Auntie exaggerated," Hevn snapped, knowing full well that she'd nearly or actually overslept many a morning as a teenager. Heck, the only thing that kept her from doing it on her science job was the fact that the man she was infatuated had been there every morning bright and early for her to sneak a look at over the top of the boiling Mr. Coffee machine.

Akabane, meanwhile, was asleep with his face in an empty cereal bowl. He was even less of a morning person, it seemed, than Hevn was.

After practically having to drag Akabane back out of bed by his ankles and rousing him to get dressed, Hevn decided that perhaps it was in their best interests to visit the water-park Marci had wanted to go to. After all, her parents were spending the day meeting with business contacts and later taking advantage of only two tickets to Kabuki, so that left the four "young ones," as her father would say, to amuse themselves.

Maybe the cold water will wake all of us up, Hevn hoped as she noticed there were dark circles even under Clifford's eyes. Wonder what kept him up all night.

The fact that Akabane didn't own a swimsuit had been fixed by the fact that Clifford had an extra pair of boxers, as Akabane had flat-out refused to be seen in public in a green Speedo. If Hevn remembered right, his actual words were "I'd rather go naked." The comment had reminded her of the previous night's incident, and she'd looked away so he wouldn't see her cheeks turning red.

"It still doesn't fit me right," Akabane noted, tugging on the drawstring band as the pants threatened to slide down around his wide hips.

"It's not natural to be that thin. Ugh, I can his your ribs," Clifford snapped back when Marci translated what Akabane had said.

"What did he say?" Akabane asked Hevn.

"He said you're unnaturally thin."

"For an American, perhaps. All that fast food… tsk, tsk, tsk."

"What did he say?" Clifford asked, peering viciously at Akabane.

"I'm not repeating it so you can play telephone insult. Come on, we're here to play in the water, so let's play in the water," Hevn said, placing her towel on a lounge chair. After a moment, she suddenly snapped around and pointed a finger at Akabane's face. "Wait a second, since when did you wear glasses?"

"You just noticed? I've had them on since this morning. I can't wear contacts in the water park, can I? I'd lose them," he answered shortly. He seemed touchy about the subject of wearing glasses, so she let the subject drop as she watched him fold them up and set them on the table the group had claimed. She wanted to say she hadn't noticed them because they'd been in the bowl of cereal he'd been sleeping in.

Clifford volunteered to take first shift babysitting the towels, so Hevn dragged a reluctant Akabane and a brooding Marci up and down the park water slides. Marci splashed around like a… well, no pun intended, but like a fish out of water. Hevn noticed a few people staring and wondered if she should buy her sister a pair of water wings. Why had she wanted to go to the park if she couldn't swim? That's the kind of foresight her sister had, Hevn thought with a sigh.

Hevn grabbed Akabane by the wrist, but this time only after checking it for disgusting things that might be there first. After making sure it was sticky drippings free, she dragged him towards one of the taller drops. "Come on, they let you ride this one in pairs. Ride down with me; it'll be fun."

Akabane started reading a warning sign at the base of the slide. "I'm not sure this is a good idea, Hevn-san…" he muttered even as she refused to listen to him, hauling him to the ladder. He happened to notice a teenage girl pointing at his tattoo and giggling, but didn't acknowledge the girl's laughter. It wasn't like it was a naked lady or anything, for God's sake. The only comment he'd ever gotten on his tattoo that he'd ever really liked was a small child asking her mother why he could draw on himself with marker and she couldn't.

Hevn dragged Akabane to the top of the ladder, despite the fact that he more or less made her pull him all the way up. "You're acting like I'm torturing you by forcing you to have fun."

"What makes you think I'm having any fun?" He'd wanted to finish reading that sign, but she'd pulled him too far away to focus on it. After all, it had said something about dangerous air currents and loose articles of clothing... but, it was too late to cry over spilt milk or unread signs as the case may be, and he couldn't see it from where they were. Not being able to see much further than five feet without assistance stank in a big way.

"Stop whining and get behind me," she ordered. "You'll have fun whether you like it or not."

"Stop ordering me around and I might," he answered calmly, not snapping but somehow speaking with a sharp-edged tongue. In fact, if one hadn't heard the actual words, they would have taken his tone of voice as pleasantly bitter.

"Are you ready? It's a scary, long drop."

"Seeing as how I essentially can't see most of it from here without my glasses, I'm fine with it." It was true, where Hevn was looking at a terrifying multiple meter drop, Akabane saw essentially a blur that might have been vaguely blue and white plastic with water running through it, if he squinted hard enough and applied his knowledge of what the surroundings around him were likely to be.

"Ready?" she asked.

"I am always ready for any challenge."

"Then let's take the plunge, shall we?" she asked, then realizing the marital implications of her statement, hastily added "no pun intended, of course," and pushed the two of them off together.

Hevn hit the water with a loud, happy scream. "Didn't that feel good?" she asked, laughing at Akabane.

He came up from under the water a few seconds later, looking straight at Hevn with a contemplative look on his face. "Hevn-san…" he began.

She turned around and began paddling back towards the side. "I'm going to get Marci to go on that with me. Did you feel the wind rustling through-"

She froze. His large, rough hands were around her chest, pressed tightly against the swell of her breasts. She felt his masculine, thin fingers brush her skin, drawing her back close to his chest in an embrace. She felt the warmth of his body in the cold water and heard the sound of his heart thudding in his chest. Her own heart rate increased ten percent in an instant, causing her to gasp. "A… Akabane-san… this is… sudden… you've never… been affectionate… like this… before…" she whispered.

"I'm not being affectionate," he whispered in a hot hiss into her ear. "Your top fell off on the ride."

To be continued… (odd spot again, but I like it!)


	7. Clifford the Accident

It was a rather amusing sight, to everyone who noticed the situation and didn't happen to be Akabane or Hevn. Hevn, her face as red as though she'd just caught Ban peeping at her panties, was trying to direct both herself and Akabane to the ladder while children, teenagers, and even rowdy adults darted about them. Each time a body splashed past her Hevn cringed, expecting them to knock her tight grip on her chest off. Akabane was no longer "supporting" her, as the case may have been, but he was following to help make sure that she made it out of the pool and back to the changing room without incident.

"Where the hell could it have gone?" she snarled, looking about the pool area.

"Do not ask me," Akabane shrugged.

"I know, I know! You don't have your glasses on!" she sighed. "Where are the Get Backers when I need them?"

"Mmm… probably having lunch, seeing as how it is nearing the noonish hour and Ginji-kun loves his snacks."

Hevn sweat-dropped slightly. More likely, Ban and Ginji were digging found out of a trash can or begging Paul to extend their credit one more yen if they were eating. More likely than that, however, was that they were starving on a street corner with their little "Get Backers for Hire" signs. Honestly, if it weren't for _her,_ she doubted they'd ever eat…

"Oh no!" Hevn suddenly cried, pulling to a dead stop, which lead Akabane to smack into her back in surprise. Fortunately, she didn't lose her grip on her chest.

"What is wrong, Hevn-san?"

"I've been so wrapped up in this engagement thing that I haven't found Ban or Ginji a job all week! They must be…" she looked into Akabane's purple eyes and saw from the expression in them that he had no genuine idea that the Get Backers were starving mutts instead of the cold professionals he'd come to regard them as. "Really bored."

Akabane nodded understandingly. "Being bored is the least of fun things."

"Right…" Hevn said, wading over to the ladder. "Now for the hard part…."

"Climbing out without flashing the poolside?" Akabane asked, smile as bright as the blistering sunlight coming through the few sparse trees shading the park.

"Watch my back," Hevn ordered, eyebrow twitching.

"Do not worry, I have watched more of your front than I ever care to see again," he replied. She couldn't tell if he was kidding or not, otherwise she might have risked her shame to give him a patented fist-to-the-head.

Somehow, she managed to make it out of the pool without incidence. Again, emphasis on the somehow. Not even Hevn herself was really sure how she managed to pull it off.

She explained to the situation (sort of) to Clifford, telling him that the snap had broken. Unfortunately, this meant that she had to take over watching the towels, as the only shirt she'd brought was foolishly light in color and wouldn't have worked in the pool.

"Why not use your bra? No one would really notice," Akabane suggested, drinking a lemonade out of a plastic bottle and sitting cross-legged at Hevn's feet.

"What would I wear out of the pool after I got it wet?" she answered, sighing. "I hate this. I paid for the admission, I should get more swimming in that just that."

Akabane picked up his small-frame glasses and slid them on his face. "I will walk around the pool and see if I can spot your garment," he said, padding off.

About twenty minutes later, Akabane returned. "I found your top."

She looked at his hands. They were empty. "Well, where is it?"

"Some teenage boys have it. They told me that it was like a 'Cinderella' deal… you prove that it fits and you can have it back."

Four small veins appeared in Hevn's forehead. "Lovely," Hevn grunted. "Watch the towels. I'm going to go make those boys realize they're not men yet. Where are they?" she asked, her hands curled into fists.

Akabane pointed. "They have a red cooler…"

"Thanks. I think I see them," she said, storming off. She was going to… to… realize that the 'boys' Akabane had referred to were actually six and half-feet tall, hairy-chested gorillas. "Ex-excuse me?" she asked, her face turning kind of greenish.

One of the men looked down at her. He had strangely large eyelashes for a man who looked like he spent his time bench-pressing small cars. "What is it, pretty lady? Come to party with the real men?"

"Actually, I came to get my top back," she said, steadying herself in her resolution. She could handle the master of the Jagan, so she could certainly handle those gorillas.

"Like we told your little girly-boy, ya gotta try it on to prove it fits."

She growled under her breath. "Fine, fine. Give it to me and I'll take it to the fitting room."

"How do we know you'd come back with it?" a guy with a voice that sounded three octaves too high for his body smirked. "You gotta put it on while we watch!"

Hevn's face turned even greener and then faded to an odd tone of red. "I don't have time for this! That top is my property and I won't be harassed by a bunch of punks over it!"

The other men looked up from their fake-tanned girlfriends, hostility in their eyes. "You shouldn't talk to us like that, little girl," one said, threateningly moving close to her.

Hevn didn't move from her spot. "What are you going to do, attack me in front of all these people?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "Not to mention the security cameras."

"Hey, do you really think anyone will move in to stop us? We run this place, little girl. Not even the cops have enough balls to stop us from doing what we want," the man grunted, grabbing Hevn's wrist.

"Oh, let go!" she cried, punching him in the chest. A shock of pain ran through her hand and she yelped. It had been like hitting a brick wall. The men all laughed and howled about how they barely felt her punch, and that they'd encountered flies with greater attack power than her.

In a moment, however, their laughter had quickly stopped, as all their pants lay on the ground around their ankles. Crying out in shame, they grabbed their garments and rushed for the bathroom, dropping Hevn by the poolside as they fled.

"Are you all right, Hevn-san?" Akabane asked as he assisted her to her feet.

"Yes, but… what happened?"

"While you were creating a distraction, I noticed they were all wearing the same style of drawstring boxers, and took the liberty of dismantling said drawstrings."

Hevn let out a sigh. "I really appreciate the gesture, don't get me wrong, but why didn't you just do that in the first place?"

He looked at her, and the expression in his eyes was one of genuine honesty that she'd never seen on his face before. Heck, she'd rarely seen it on anyone's faces anymore, considering the type of clients she dealt with in her business. "It's not safe for me to openly display my powers in public. While they were distracted by you, I could. But if I had just openly sliced at them…"

"The fact that you have inhuman powers might have caused an undesirable commotion?" she asked. He nodded, and Hevn found herself surprised at how accustomed she'd become to people who had supernatural powers. She hardly found anyone displaying their abilities in broad daylight strange anymore, but she also realized that the general population did find them odd. The sad expression in Akabane's eyes made her highly suspect that some negative impact had happened upon him as a result of him using his powers openly in public in the past. She doubted she could find out what had happened, though, if he was so secretive he wouldn't even tell her about his hat.

She realized that he'd walked off instead of answering her, but guessed that was for the best. The look in his eyes felt as though it had rubbed off on her, penetrating her body with its extreme sense of mourning and lost. She shivered. Suddenly she no longer wanted to stay by the pool side.

The brush of cold Hevn had felt turned out to be the weather turning sour rather than any indication of her picking up on Akabane's closed feelings, leaving the four to run from the rainfall as the pool closed down due to lightning streaking across the sky.

"Lightning always reminds me of Ginji," Hevn noted, to which Akabane nodded. At least his expression had returned to happy-neutral. She wouldn't have been able to bear looking at a pure canvas of pain all day.

"Who's Ginji?" Marci asked, fixing her chlorine-soaked hair.

"One of the…" she'd started to say one of the guards where I work, but she was tired of lying and keeping up appearances. "One of my friends."

"You were going to say something else first, dear sister. What were you going to say?" Marci prodded.

"I misspoke," Hevn snapped, feeling her patience with Marci's constant prodding breaking. "It's not important, no matter what you might think."

"Geez, sister, no need to bite my head off."

Akabane looked at his watch. "I have to go change for work," he informed Hevn. A moment ago, she'd slipped the keys into his hand beneath the table so that her sister wouldn't see his gesture. They'd arranged for him to leave the keys in the convenience store by Hevn's apartment. She trusted the owner, and she could pick them up while pretending to just stop for something to drink.

"All right. Be careful," Hevn nodded, watching him pick up his bag of wet swim things and disappear out into the pouring rain.

Marci looked at Clifford, who looked back and nodded. Now was the time to act, while Hevn's precious bodyguard was out of the picture. "Sister, I've been thinking… let's hit up the bars tonight!"

"Bars? I thought those were below you."

"It's Japan, we're young, let's party," Marci smiled.

Hevn frowned. "I also thought parties were below you, if they weren't being thrown by someone who could help you get ahead in your career."

"Stop analyzing me," Marci replied, a sour expression on her face. "I just want to get out and live a little while our parents aren't here to slow us down."

"Well, at least that sounds like you," Hevn shrugged. "What kind of bar do you want to go to? Something fancy?"

"How about one of those weird themed bars that you can't find in America?"

"Sports bars and western bars are themed bars, Marci."

"You know what I mean!" Marci squealed, voice high-pitched. "We don't have Pokemon or waitresses in maid-dresses bars back home."

Hevn ended up laughing despite herself. "I don't think I know of any Pokemon bars, and maid dress bars are usually pervert havens. Are you sure that's what you want?"

"You're making this hard, sister dear. Just pick a bar, and let's go out to drink."

They ended up at a small bar that was indeed maid-themed, and as Hevn had warned her sister, was the definition of a haven for the sort of person you wouldn't want to accidentally brush up against on the subway. That was, of course, unless you happened to like the feel of unwashed hands brushing up your miniskirt. Hey, some people like that kind of thing.

Akabane, meanwhile, was very far from the festivities. Having just finished the exchange, he crawled back up to the high seats of Mr. No Brakes' truck. Letting out a sigh, he swished his blades in and out of his hands. What a boring job to follow a half-week of not having any fun at all.

"So…" Mr. No Brakes said, breaking the silence. "What's with this rumor that you're engaged?"

Akabane gagged. Had he been drinking anything, he likely would have spit it out. "Where did you hear such a silly thing?" he asked, staring at Mr. No Brakes across the darkened truck. Only the dashboard lights lit the cab, causing both their faces to look ghoulishly deformed.

"It's been flying through the underworld that you're engaged."

Akabane grunted and pulled his hat down over his eyes. Well, wasn't THAT just the cherry on the sundae? Rumors like that had a tendency to hang on for longer than she really should, and he truly didn't feel like being taunted by some of the other transporters that felt comfortable joking with him about it. Perhaps he'd just go into menacing-Akabane mode if anyone brought it up. Even those who he'd call "close" to him tended to back off when his eyes grew wide and took on that crazed edge they sometimes did when he was particularly excited about a fight.

"There's one thing I don't understand about the rumors, though. Why would you be hanging out with Clifford the accident?"

Akabane pulled his hat back up. "Say that again?"

"Suzuki said she saw you with two girls and Clifford the accident, and that you were introducing the larger-breasted of the women as your fiancé."

"No, I am not interested in the rumor. Who is Clifford the accident?"

Mr. No Brakes glanced over at Akabane, wondering why he'd taken such a sudden interest in the conversation. Usually, no conversation could rouse Akabane from his apathy, no matter how interesting it might have seemed to be. "I'm not surprised you wouldn't know him, it's odd that he'd in Japan. He's an American, his speciality being that he can make any death look like an accident, no matter how bizarre. He's more of a spin doctor than an assassin, though, preferring to contract out plots with lower thugs… Akabane-san?" he asked, looking over at the very strange, wide-eyed expression that Akabane was making. "Hey, Doctor Jackal, you don't look so good…"

"How fast can you get back to Shinjuku?" Akabane asked, his voice quiet.

"Huh? We don't have any cargo anymore-"

"Don't ask questions, answer them," Akabane snapped, his voice freakishly deep. "How fast can you get back to Shinjuku?"

"Half hour if traffic is good and we don't hit any cop zones," Mr. No Brakes answered, feeling nervous. Akabane's head was down, his shoulders moving back and forth as though he were taking rather unnatural breaths.

"Please try to do better than that. I am not sure that she will be safe that long without my presence."

"I don't understand-"

"You do not need to!" Akabane snapped, startling Mr. No Brakes. "You just need to drive!"

Back at the bar, Hevn laughed as she helped herself to only her second drink of the night. "Tish ish good stuff! Ish drunk and this is mah only second glass!" she giggled, spilling liquor on her dress.

Marci looked at Clifford, and the two passed the same eerie smile between them as at the restaurant. "I'm glad you like it, sister. Please, drink it quickly before it gets warm."

Hevn giggled yet again, completely out of control of her senses. "Whee! Ish gonna go a-dancing! DANCING!" Hevn laughed, attempting to stand and crawl up on the table. A rush passed through her head when she stood, causing her to fall backwards and collapse into the plush chair she'd been sitting in. "Tha wold is spin…" she muttered, voice slurred.

Marci smiled. "Yes, Hevn, it is. Perhaps we should go home now."

"Nah way, I havin fahn!" Hevn cried, before lying her head back down and passing out in her own drool in her chair.

Clifford smiled warmly and waved over a waiter. "Waiter, could you please tell me the number of a good cab company? My fianc's sister is drunk," he purred in perfect Japanese.

The waiter nodded and disappeared to bring them a piece of paper. In the meantime, Clifford made sure that they made as much of a commotion as possible as they helped Hevn to her feet. After all, the more witnesses they left to testify that Hevn had been drunk out of her mind at the time of her unfortunate death, the less suspicion that would fall on their shoulders.

Hevn's head lolled as they dragged her out to the waiting taxi. People glanced at her as they pulled her past, but pretended they hadn't looked. It was human nature to gawk; it was society's nature to pretend that they didn't. Clifford didn't mind, intentionally making a big commotion out of shouting "Hevn, careful! Oh, Hevn, you had faaaaar too much!" to ensure that the threesome would stay in the collective memories of the bar patrons.

After unloading the drunken Hevn from the taxi in front of her apartment, Marci ensured that they weren't being watched, returning her gaze to Clifford. "What now?"

"We take her upstairs and drown her in her own bathtub. We'll say we didn't notice that she'd passed out again until it was too late. What a tragedy, we'll say. You'll cry about how you should have _insisted_ she wasn't sober enough to bathe on her own, but she just wouldn't listen. You'll cry that it's all your fault; if only you could have saved your beloved sister by stopping her. Then I'll comfort you, and the pity of the news readers will be for us… should the simple drowning of a drunk attract anything beyond a crime report and a short obituary, that is."

"What about her bodyguard? He isn't likely to buy the story."

Clifford smiled and put a hand on Marci's bare shoulder, squeezing her gently. "I'll take care of her bodyguard. Don't you worry."

On the far edges of the rough boundaries of what could constitute Shinjuku, Akabane sat forward on the edge of his seat. "A traffic jam? At this time of night?"

"There must have been an accident- hey, where are you going?" he asked as Akabane pushed open the door to the truck.

"It will be faster if I run," he answered, shutting the door behind him.

"You can't use your powers for that long of a time! Your heart will burst!" Mr. No Brakes argued angrily back as Akabane stepped down the ladder onto the pavement.

"It's not that far to her apartment from here. I'll go there first, as I have no clue where else in the city I should look for them." With that, he vanished in a blur as though he had never even existed in the first place.

"Damn it," Clifford swore back at the apartment. "Where the heck are her keys in this massive purse?"

"Dump it out," Marci answered. "We don't have the time to be playing games."

He dumped the entire contents of the purse upon the ground. "No keys!"

"Ugh, she must have lost them or gotten them stolen!" He looked around. "We don't have time for this; we're drawing attention to ourselves. Help me drag her around back."

"What are we doing?" Marci asked, taking her sisters legs and dragging.

"Change of plans," he answered. "Stay here."

He jogged towards the corner store, an idea gestating in his head. He returned quickly, Marci looking questioningly at him. "I hate having to leave behind witnesses," he sighed, then grinned. "So I didn't." With that, he pulled lighter fluid and alcohol out of bag, lying them down beneath a pack of cigarettes.

"Old man?" Akabane asked as he pushed open the door to the small store. "Old man, has Hevn come for her keys?" he asked aloud. The story was empty, making Akabane slightly nervous. Usually the old guy was there alone, diligently minding the registers through the night hours. "Old man?" he asked, peering in back. No one.

"This is strange," Akabane muttered, stepping out. He disappeared down a back alley, knowing that way would lead him to a shortcut to Hevn's apartment. Had he not done so, he never would have found the old man.

He was lying face down next to the dumpster, a small metal object sticking out of his neck. Cautiously, Akabane pulled on the object until it came out of the soft flesh of the corpses' neck. He'd seen them before, poisonous darts that were made of a soft metal that would disintegrate after being left in contact with blood for long enough. Most assassins that used them would have returned for the dart themselves, if possible though. The killer must have been in a hurry.

This only heightened Akabane's feeling of need to find Hevn. Even though he had no evidence, he couldn't help but connect the store keeper's death to the man Mr. No Breaks had spoken of. Especially since the dead man had a large bash on his head and was lying with his foot in a puddle, as though he'd hit his head on the dumpster after slipping. Running towards Hevn's apartment, Akabane felt almost a twinge of pity that he would likely be the only one to ever know the truth, due to the nature of the poison used.

Clifford emptied out the last bottle of alcohol and lighter fluid mixed, lighting a cigarette and smiling brightly at it. "Lighter fluid is much safer to use to start fires than gasoline," he smiled at the confused Marci. "Mixed with the alcohol… we'll just place this lit cigarette between her fingers, and when she naturally moves or twitches or a hot ash falls, she'll go up like a birthday candle." He kicked the last empty alcohol bottle next to Hevn's leg. "Poor girl, a victim of her own drunkness. Well, we tried to warn her she was too drunk to be smoking, but she just wouldn't listen."

"Yes," Marci purred, arm around Clifford. "We tried."

Clifford laughed as he and Marci walked off, leaving the burning cigarette in Hevn's hands as they vanished into the streetlight-lit city.

Akabane arrived at Hevn's apartment shortly after they disappeared, cursing himself for not finding out if she had picked up the keys when he was at the store. He pressed harshly down on the call button. "Hevn-san!" he shouted into the com. "Hevn-san, pick up your telephone!"

No answer. He released the button, sighing in frustration. "No answer." He moved around the side, figuring that he could climb up the fire escape. Maybe there'd at least be a hint to where Hevn had gone in the apartment…

Turning the corner, he let out a sigh of relief to see Hevn lying in the alley, apparently unconscious but her chest still moving. She's alive and breathing, he thought to himself, even if she does smell like she's completely drunk. I panicked for no reason at all. In fact, he was honestly shocked that he had panicked. Hevn didn't mean anything to him, anything at all. Why should he be so worried?

It was at that moment that Hevn inadvertently answered his inner question by dropping the cigarette.

.0.

.-.

To Be Continued


	8. Last Man Out

Author note time: I developed SUPAA author's block while working on this chapter. My apologizes for taking so long to update. It's just like… blah. I can't even begin to describe the feeling. Every time I put the first word down, I decide I don't like it and hit backspace angrily a few times. I think I'll go repeatedly hit my head on the keyboard for awhile now. Thanks.

-&-

Another pair of eyes was watching Hevn that night, a pair of eyes that had an entirely different reason for being interested in her than either Akabane or Clifford. For you see, there was a security camera outside of Hevn's apartment that had become an object of fascination for Midou Ban. Why was it so fascinating? Simple. He was spying on Hevn to find out if she really _was_ dating the monster known as Doctor Jackal, or if some retrieval plot was afoot that she had inconsiderately left the real Get Backers out of… again.

Ban watched the flames went up. Concern and panic flashed through his eyes as he bolted down the stairs from the upper floor of the Honky Tonk. He barely said a word to Ginji as he grabbed the youth by the collar of his oversized white shirt and hauled tail out to the Lady Bug.

"Ban-chan, what's going on?" Ginji cried, excited.

"Hevn needs us!" he answered, slamming the pedal to the floor and roaring out into traffic, cutting off several cars and sending up an angry chorus of honks behind them.

Ginji cried out and dug his grubby fingers into the Oh, Shit handle. "Ban-chan, what's going ooooon?" he cried, watching as Ban nearly rear-ended someone in his rush to skit around a left-hand corner. The cars wheels lost their grip, and for a moment it was almost as though they were drifting.

"No time to explain. Hevn is in danger!" he answered.

By the time they squealed up to the alley, it was empty. Ban said some very nasty words as he kicked at the ground where Hevn should have been, snarling to himself. "Ban-chan, what is going _on?_" Ginji demanded, his voice edgy with confusion.

"That girl who came into the Honky Tonk with Hevn tried to kill her. I saw it on the security camera," Ban answered, pointing up to the camera.

Ginji gave Ban a sideways look. "Why were you watching Hevn-san?"

"That- that doesn't matter!" Ban stammered. "We have to find her." Of course, his panic was justified. From his vantage point via the camera, he hadn't been able to see that Akabane was there when the flames had started up. He also hadn't been watching his monitor to see Akabane extinguish the flames with his coat, taking Hevn up into his arms and running with her at full speed towards the hospital.

"Where should we look, Ban-chan?" Ginji asked, looking around. He was worried for Hevn, and he hadn't seen what Ban had.

"I…" he hesitated. "Her parent's hotel room. If we hurry we might be able to catch the sister before she skips the country." With that, the two Get Backers ran towards Ban's car.

Contrary to what the Get Backers thought, Marci had no intentions of skipping the country at the moment. Unfortunately, nor was she at her parent's hotel room. She rested in a second room that Clifford had rented using false credentials while he frowned, his brows down turned, and clicked about on his laptop.

"Stop looking so depressed and help me open this bottle of wine," she smiled at him. (Use 'she said with a smile', or make a separate sentence: She smiled at him. Smiling doesn't work as a synonym for 'said.') "We've finally won. I'm the sole heir to the estate, and you'll get a handsome assassin's fee when we return to the States."

"I make it a point to never celebrate until I am certain that a job is entirely done," he answered, looking concerned as he rapidly moved his mouse about the screen.

"Stop being so serious for one moment. She was about to become a ball of flame when we left. In the morning, the police will find nothing but her grizzly accident-fried corpse."

"That's what I'm trying to verify," he answered, voice dark. "But I can't get this security camera feed to open." He glanced over his shoulder. "Oh, what the hell? Pour us a few glasses of wine from the counter, and let's drink to a job well done."

"I knew you'd see things my way," Marci cooed, popping the cork and filling the glasses. She handed one to Clifford, lifting her own high in the air. "To the estate!" she toasted, downing her drink.

Clifford watched her, setting down his own glass. "Yes. To money," he smiled his voice barely a whisper.

"I'm going to order room service, dear. Maybe some… salmon sushi," she said with a dramatic flair. After all, what else were tourists supposed to eat in Japan other than sushi. She thumbed the menu, frowning. Did ribbon script have to be so damn impossible to read? She glanced over her shoulder. "What do you want? Clifford?" Marci asked, confused. "Why aren't you drinking?" A piercing headache hit her right as she said the last word, causing her to drop her glass onto the carpet and stumble backwards, holding her head. Her vision blurred and slanted, causing her to collapse backwards into a chair. "What's happening to me?" she squeaked, voice panicked.

"Did you really believe that I would accept a paltry hit man's salary when your family's millions were up for the grabs?" he asked, rising from his seat and towering over the fallen girl. "How arrogant."

"Clifford… you… you bastard…"

He laughed and grabbed her under the chin, forcing her rapidly dilating eyes upwards. "You shouldn't speak to your husband like that, my dear. Oh, yes. I didn't tell you that according to papers back home, we were married and this little trip was to be our honeymoon." He smirked. "The fact that you acted the part for your parents and the high-ups means that no one will doubt the authenticity of my claims." He rested a hand dramatically on his own forehead. "What a tragedy this will be, my new bride and her entire family… dead on our honeymoon."

"Fam… family? Leave my… parents… out of this," she tried to stammer indignantly.

"I'm sorry, my beloved, but I can't. I have to be the _sole heir_, as you kept emphasizing." He dropped her back onto the seat, watching her gasp as she fought to remain conscious. "This will be my greatest triumph as Clifford the accident," he informed her, putting pressure on the word accident. "A wonderful private-jet tour over Japan, gone horribly wrong. Oh, and the little black box they'll recover? Don't worry about it. It's pre-recorded with the sound of your voices screaming as the selfish pilot abandons you to save his own skin. What a horrible, horrible man, wasn't he? I wonder if I should collapse or just weep when I tell the news that if only I had felt well enough to go on a flight that day, I might have been able to die beside my beautiful bride and her family! I wonder what I should say I was ill with… perhaps the collapsing is too much. Just weeping is always tasteful."

"You piece of," Marci tried to say, voice slurred.

"Call me what you will, dear. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but with your family's diamonds, names will never hurt me."

The computer beeped behind them, drawing Clifford back to the desk where he'd left his laptop. An angry snarl escaped his lips. "Well, it looks like Hevn's little boy-guard has bought you an extension," he snapped when he saw that the file could not be deleted because someone else was currently viewing it. In Clifford's mind, there was only one person that could possibly be. "I have to kill him first, then I'll be back to finish off you and your family."

He pulled a rope out of the closet and bound her tightly to the chair. "Stay here, won't you?" he asked, making sure her mouth was gagged so that she couldn't cry out should she awaken. "This will be fun. I've never gotten to assassinate someone of his caliber before."

Those were the last words Marci heard before she passed out.

-&

Hevn slowly slid back to consciousness some time early the next morning. She knew it was morning only because light was filtering through some of kind of gel mask over her eyes. She couldn't remember having owned a sleep mask.

She reached up to attempt to move it, and found herself unable to lift her arm without pain. Surprised and worried, she attempted to sit upright. Her attempt was foiled by the pain that any sort of moment sent shooting through her arms. She let out a pained sigh of resignation, falling back into the sheets. "Damn it," she mumbled through lips that felt unusually thick. "I hate feeling this weak."

"That sounds like something I would say," a male voice answered her. She almost didn't recognize the voice, as it was far more subtle and gentle than she was used to.

"Akabane-san?" she asked. "Akabane-san, I can't see you."

"I thought you'd agreed to call me Akabane," he responded to her. She felt large hands brush past her ears, which hurt more than it should, before he pushed the gel pack over her eyes and onto her forehead. She didn't know which was more shocking; the pain she was in or hearing him use informal speech.

"What's going on? Why does it hurt?" she asked, wriggling back and forth as she attempted to push herself upright.

"Stop moving around," he ordered, making sure that she couldn't get up off the bed. "Don't make so much noise, either. I'll get in trouble if they find out I'm in here."

"Get in trouble? What's going on?" she repeated, feeling panic rising in her throat with each passing moment.

"Hevn-sa- Hevn, there's no easy way to say this, but your sister…"

"Attempted to murder you last night," a very familiar voice said authoritatively from across the room. Hevn felt Akabane's grip on her hand tighten as his body tensed.

"Ban?" she asked, feeling more confused than she ever had before. "Will someone please explain to me what's going on?"

"You are in the hospital," Akabane said, and Hevn distinctly noticed that he'd snapped back into formal speech. "Your sister attempted to kill you with fire last night."

"And it seems that she's gotten to your parents, too," Ban added. "Ginji and I went to their hotel room to confront her and they're all missing, but their luggage is still there and the hotel staff never received any intent that they planned on leaving."

Hevn felt her heart sinking with each word. "Maybe… they're just out for the day…" she whispered faintly.

"We arrived at their room at five in the morning. You tell me what tourists would be doing up at five in the morning."

"Dad… likes morning walks…" she said, her voice failing.

"Hotel staff said they left with a man matching the description of the guy who was with your sister when you came into the Honky Tonk."

"That man is an assassin known as Clifford the Accident. I had not heard of him, but Mr. No Brakes had," Akabane informed the two. "I suspect that Hevn-san's parents are in grave danger."

"Ban, Ginji," Hevn begged, wriggling beneath the blankets. "You have to get back my parents! Please! I'll give you anything!" she begged, tears trying to form in her injured eyes. Why couldn't she cry? She felt like she needed to. Why did everything hurt to move? "I know I said a lot of horrible things about them, but… they're still my family," she sniffled, her throat hurting from the action.

"We don't know where he would have taken them," Ginji said fretfully. "We were hoping you might have an idea."

Akabane, meanwhile, had folded his hands neatly in his lap as he sat quietly in the cheap plastic hospital chair. He was inwardly hurt that Hevn had immediately turned to Ban and Ginji for help when he was sitting right there and had been the one saving her butt all along. He wasn't quite sure why he was hurt; he didn't have any sort of emotional attachment to her or her family. It was just a feeling akin to being the last kid chosen at the playground. If anyone noticed that he looked unhappy, they didn't say anything about it. How cruel of her, to ignore him when he'd even dirtied up his coat for her…

His coat! He pulled a small cell phone out of one of the pockets, looking relieved. "I did not lose it in the commotion," he said proudly to himself.

"This is no time to order take-out," Ban snapped.

Akabane glared at him. "This phone belonged to one of Clifford's minions. He accidentally spoke to me once on it."

Ban snatched the phone out of Akabane's hands. "If we can track down where that cell phone was last used, we can narrow down the area to search."

"That was my thought," Akabane replied. His voice was even outwardly, but his internal emotions were rather stirred up. Ban should at least give credit where the credit was due, and right now, the credit was due to him.

"Come on Ginji, let's go," Ban said, ignoring Akabane's comment entirely. He paused, and then pulled a CD out of his pocket. "This is the file showing what happened last night. Make sure it gets to the police." Akabane reached out to take the CD, but Ban shoved past him in such a way that he nearly knocked him over and neatly handed the disk to Hevn instead. Turning his head back over his shoulder, he glared. "I don't need you to complete any deliveries for me," he snapped before grabbing Ginji and pulling him out of the room.

As they clamored back into the Lady Bug, Ban noticed that Ginji seemed to have lost a shade or two of color in his face. "Ginji? What's wrong?"

"When you pushed Akabane-san… I noticed that he wasn't wearing pants under his coat," Ginji murmured, fear filling his voice.

There was, actually, a good reason for that. Akabane, however, was not concerned with that at the moment. He was too busy deciding if he wanted to be hurt or amused by Ban's intentional childish and Hevn's unintentional callous treatment of him. "Well, I think I will go now."

"Go?" Hevn asked.

"Of course. With your sister in jail for attempted murder, you will be the inheritor whether you are engaged or not. My presence is not necessary here anymore."

"Oh…" she said, feeling slightly disappointed. All that time and he'd managed to continue just acting the part. Funny, she'd almost felt as though he might have genuinely been opening up to her. Who was she kidding? Men like that never changed. "Good-bye, I guess."

She heard a little thud noise. "Akabane?" she asked. When she didn't get an answer and couldn't move her head enough to look and see why, she panicked a bit. It hadn't been the sound of a door closing. "Akabane, are you okay?" When he didn't answer for the second time, she managed to flip around like a fish out of water enough to get hold of the call button, pressing it so many times in a row that she made herself obnoxious.

The nurse coming in to enter only got out the first few words of asking what was wrong before making a surprised sound. "What happened here?" she asked.

"I don't know, I can't see!" Hevn sighed in frustration.

"Poor little thing, it must be his heart again. I'll get someone to help him back to his room."

"His heart? His room? What's wrong with him?" Hevn asked, unbidden concern creeping into her voice.

"Calm down, please. You're not in any shape to be thrashing around either," the nurse sternly informed Hevn as a pair of assistants arrived, pushing a wheelchair between them. "He brought you in and then collapsed on the emergency room floor from exhaustion. The doctor said his muscles were tired as though he'd just finished running a marathon without training for it."

It was true. He'd pushed his powers too far between running to Hevn's apartment and then running to the hospital. As they had gone up the hospital stairs he hadn't been sure he was going to have enough strength left to push open the door, but fortunately someone was leaving as he was entering. He truly hadn't brought her in; he'd walked up to the appointment desk and promptly fainted on the floor, Hevn and all. He hadn't suffered a heart attack at that point, but hospital staff had given him oxygen and a bed to rest in for observation. After finding blood coughed up on his pillow that morning, the doctors decided he'd be staying for a longer observation period than previously expected while they ran further tests. None of them had said it yet, but they were afraid of a serious disease.

"Wait!" Hevn called as they were leaving, holding out the disk. "He was holding this for me. He'd be disappointed if I didn't let him."

The nurse smiled and tucked the CD into Akabane's coat pocket before instructing the attendants to return him to his room and make sure he stayed in bed, as he was obviously in no shape to be wandering the hallways yet. "I can't believe it… he hurt himself to help me…" she muttered, "and I've been treating him like my personal doormat all week." She let out as deep of sigh as her injured lungs would allow. "I've been treating everyone like my personal doormat this week." She felt bad. They all knew money was one of her top personal priorities, but even she found herself strangely unnerved by how far she'd been willing to twist herself for it. "No more. I'm coming clean to my parents." She let out a whimper after saying that. "That is… assuming Ban and Ginji can find them in time."


	9. Parking in the Concrete Palm

As the phrase goes, you can't keep a good man down. While Akabane Kuroudo may not have qualified as a good man, he certainly was not easy to keep down. Within the passage of an hour he was already up and dressing himself, having decided that he was qualified to discharge himself from the hospital. By which, he meant that he was going to put his clothes back on and walk right out whether they wanted him to or not. After all, the others had made it blatantly obvious that his presence there was not desired.

As he reached into his pocket to remove his gloves, his hand hit something hard. Curious, he withdrew it. He recognized the pink CD case that Ban's precious security camera footage had been inside. How had that gotten in here? Well, no bother to him. He'd just leave it on her nightstand and be on her way.

He peeked his head into her room. Drat, she was sitting up. That meant he might actually have to talk to her, rather than just leaving it and vanishing. If she made an attempt at apology, he'd just leave. He didn't want to hear it.

As he walked further into the room, however, it became more apparent with every footstep that he was the furthest thing from her mind. She was cradling a mirror in her lap, touching the bandages on her face and neck. Her hands kept wandering back to what remained of her hair. What had been burned, the medics had brutally sliced off because it kept falling against her wounds and sticking.

Akabane found himself in an awkward spot. From the look in her eyes, he could just leave the CD and go and she'd probably never notice. On the other hand, that despairing look made him want to stop and at least attempt to offer her some small comforting words before he went. Decisions, decisions…

He started putting the disk on the desk when she finally spoke directly to him, hiding her face with her hands. "I can understand if you don't want to guard things for me anymore, now that I'm hideously scarred."

He sighed. He hated self-pitying attitudes. "I am putting it back because Ban did not seem to want me to have it."

"Ban can go stick his head in a bucket. Ban's not the man I-"

There was a pause, during which Akabane raised an eyebrow. "Yeeeeeeees?" he asked, voice like velvet.

"Nevermind," she said. Where he could see her cheeks under the bandages, they were redder than they had been before, and the tips of her ears were red. "It doesn't matter now, anyway. Ban and Ginji won't want to work for me if I'm not pretty anymore."

"Do not say that, Miss Mediator," he said sternly. "They may not get much credit, but if there is one thing I must give them credit for, it is the fact that Ginji-kun would never throw someone away that callously. Especially not a friend. Ban, on the other hand… is a rather loathsome man, for all he says about me."

Hevn let out a small snort, almost as though she might have laughed were she not depressed. "Akabane, look at these bandages. Look at how much of my skin was burned."

"You were only on fire for a few seconds at best. There may be a lot of wounds but they are not deep." He hesitated, wishing he could ease his way towards the door. "You'll heal."

"And if I don't? The only reason anyone took me seriously as a mediator was that I was beautiful."

"Miss Hevn, I hate self-pity, and I have no kind words to give for someone who wallows in it like a pig in mud. I will, however, say that I have never judged you based on your appearance. Out of the various Get Backers I have had to work with, I respect you as much as I do Lady Poison, and not because of your appearance. I respected you because you were able to bottle up your personal feelings about me in order to get the job done. You never sneered at me or called me a monster; even though I am sure you thought those things just like the others. It was that professionalism that made me admire you enough to get involved with this insanity in the first place, not a cheap pair of Ginji-kun's underpants. Which, I should add, you never gave me. Now if you will excuse me, I have other jobs to take."

Finished with his tirade, he turned on his heel. Before he could walk towards the door, a bandaged hand gripped his wrist and held tight. He looked over his shoulder and found himself staring into big, shining yellow eyes. "I never thought of you as a monster."

"I dislike liars about as much as I dislike self-pity."

"It's true! You were always very kind and gentlemanly… with me, at least. Perhaps it's because I've never actually had to fight you that makes things different from for me. If you're going to admire me for my professionalism, then don't cheapen it by stomping off like a petulant child."

The two just stared at one another, both angrier than they should have been but both unwilling to break the usual uncaring masks they showed to the world. Each one was waiting to see when the other one would break. A slipped sigh, a squeak of shoes against the tile, the trembling of Hevn's hand and the match would be over. Neither of them wanted to be the one who would end the war of wills in defeat.

Of course, even the most stubborn child can only hold its breath for so long before it turns blue and passes out. Thus, Akabane and Hevn were doomed to have to end their stand off. Fortunately for the sense of both their delicate egos, they ended it with a mutual sigh.

"You really think I'll be okay?" Hevn asked.

"Of course. The burns will heal, and if they don't… Ginji won't hold it against you."

"Will you?"

He flopped down on the end of the bed. His chest felt unnaturally tight, but he wanted to make it look like he was just casually choosing to sit. "I'd be a hypocrite if I did. You've seen my scars."

"By accident," she said, blushing. "I swear, my sister told me no one was in the bathroom. I'm not a pervert."

"Mmm. Admit it, Hevn. You just wanted to see me naked."

"Oh, and I suppose you untied my bikini top at the water park just so you could see my breasts!" she answered back in mock anger, attempting to ream him with a pillow. "Move closer so I can hit you," she angrily informed him, waving the pillow in mid-air.

"Are you ticklish, Hevn? I'm sitting right here by your feet…"

"Don't you dare! I'll kick you in the face!"

"A response like that is an affirmative," he answered, threateningly pulling at her hospital blankets.

Outside the door, a couple of staff peeked in, grins on their faces. "Ah, young love," one of them sighed happily.

"What an unlikely couple," the other one commented.

"It is rather cute, isn't it?" a voice sneered behind them. "Too bad I'm going to have to break it up."

The two hospital employees turned around to find a man with a mask over his face and a gun in his hand.

Across town, Ban and Ginji had finally located the source of Clifford's phone. "Hurry, this is the hotel," Ban informed Ginji, leaping out of the Lady Bug. "According to the company that rents cellular phones to foreign tourists, this is the hotel address he listed."

Ginji jumped out of the bug, only after making sure it was in a perfectly legit parking spot. The last thing they needed in a crisis moment was a parking or towing ticket. "Let's go kick some butt," he said, sparking with excitement.

The two rushed the little hotel like gangbusters. "Ginji, you get Hevn's family and I'll take out the sister and her pet murderer," Ban informed, rushing the door. They'd called earlier pretending to be friends and had sweet-talked the desk girl into giving them the room Clifford had registered. He hadn't put it under the name he and Hevn's sister had been using, but she'd recognized Marci's distinctive look.

"Right, Ban-chan," Ginji answered, rushing after his partner. Their shoes thudded loudly on the wooden floor of the boardwalk surrounding the hotel.

Ban kicked in the door with one mighty blow, as it was a rather cheap lock. "No one move!" he shouted dramatically. Leaping into the room with his arms outstretched so that it looked as if he were pointing finger guns.

Unfortunately, there was no one there to listen to his command one way or another. Ginji's went a bit limp behind him, disappointed. "Is this the wrong room?"

The two looked about. Other than a broken glass on the floor, the room looked perfectly normal. No signs of a struggle, but then, why would there be one? Marci and Clifford were in on this together, as far as Ban and Ginji were concerned. Rapidly scanning the room, Ban's eye caught sight of the laptop computer. He hurried over, pulling it open. "Good luck, the bastard left it running!" he called to Ginji. Before his eyes was the security camera feed he'd been watching only earlier that morning. He tried pulling the feed back to the incriminating evidence, only to find the file had been corrupted. "He already got to the file."

"It's a good thing we left the copy with Hevn-san!"

Ban bit his lip, concern in his eyes. "I suppose he wouldn't have any reason to suspect she had a copy. Still, we should warn her. He-" Ban was cut off by the little rental starting to ring. He snatched it up, answering. "Hello?"

"CTA? You sound terrible, man."

"Nevermind my health… there's been a complication. Where is the… cargo?"

"Don't worry, man. They're loading 'em up in the plane now."

"Plane?" Ban asked, shushing the nervously dancing Ginji beside him. "Oh, plane. The line is cutting out like you wouldn't believe over here. I need to check something. Where is the plane right now?"

Fortunately for Ban, Clifford's assistant was none too bright and gave Ban the address without a single question as to why he would have to ask about a location he supposedly already knew. Hanging up the phone, he looked over at Ginji. "Hevn will have to take care of herself; we don't have much time to reach her family."

Ginji ran beside Ban back out to the car. "She's with Akabane-san. What could happen to her?"

As if to answer their question, right at that moment, Akabane was standing between Hevn and Clifford, a single scalpel between his fingers, and a deflected bullet lodged into the wall. She was clinging to his back, her face buried protectively in the folds of his coat.

The masked assailant lowered his gun about two centimeters. "You live up to your reputation, don't you? I almost didn't believe them when they said you were faster than bullets."

"Clifford," Hevn hissed, clinging to Akabane's coat and peeking out at him, eyes practically alight with disgust.

"Stay behind me," Akabane ordered.

"There's no need for her to do that," Clifford grunted from behind his mask. "Now that I know you can dodge bullets why would I waste my time trying to shoot you? Especially when I can just shoot these poor, slow-moving interns instead." As if to prove his point, he fired a warning shot that ripped through and destroyed a machine above the candy striper's heads. The two cried out and winced as broken computer parts fell onto their backs. The hospital heads were not going to be happy; he'd shot the very expensive machine that went ping.

"What do you want?" Hevn snarled. "What have you and Marci done to my parents?"

"Why do you care? I could tell neither of you girls loved them in the first place. You just loved their money."

"That's why I care. What I did was wrong. I have to… I have to set things right with them before it's too late," she said, her voice losing volume with each word until it was barely a whisper.

Akabane moved over, continuing to keep himself between Clifford and Hevn. "I will not let you kill her. If you think I would bargain her life for theirs-"

"I wouldn't. I've done my research on you; even though you don't seem to have done yours on me. You're not the type to spare anyone's life, in any situation. So obviously I can't trade their lives for hers. What I will offer, however, is this deal. Give me the recording from the alley, and I'll let these two go."

"I will not give it to you!"

"Akabane, no. Give him the recording."

"Hevn-san, it's the only proof that will send this man to jail…"

"It's not worth letting two people die over," she said, picking the disk up off the table. Akabane knew that he disagreed, but for some reason he couldn't voice his objection. Hevn had made her decision, and he was not going to interfere. She threw the disk across the floor, where it hit the ground and skidded to a stop at Clifford's feet. He knelt and grabbed it, still holding the gun at the frightened employees.

"Don't think that this means I won't come back for you, dear miss. It just means that now you don't have a leg to prosecute me on other than your words, and I doubt a man such as your infamous friend would want to risk a court appearance." Akabane tensed up, irritated by Clifford's smug words. "Good-bye, my dears," he said, blowing them a fake kiss. "Oh, and if you come after me, I'll start randomly shooting patients."

With that, he vanished down the hallway. "I hate losing to an inferior enemy," Akabane spat.

Hevn rubbed his arm, trying to show her appreciation for what he'd done. "Then… thank you for doing what I asked you to do instead of what you thought you should do."

"Unfortunately, he is telling the truth about the evidence being gone. Unless Ban had the foresight to make a copy, which it sounds as though he did not, there will not be a way to prove to your parents that your sister was nearly responsible for their deaths."

"My parents… Gods, please let Ban and Ginji get to them in time!"

Right at that moment, Ban and Ginji tore down the dock to the water plane's take-off pier. "Hurry, Ginji, there's the plane!"

"It's pulling out!" Ginji cried, hair blowing wildly in the wind. "We'll never catch it in time!"

"Oh, yes we will!" Ban shouted, grabbing the tie-off tope that was hanging from the back of the plane and wrapping it quickly around dock pole. "Ha!" The pole let out a loud, angry sound before the top snapped clean off and began dragging down the dock. Ban made a loud, obscene cry of disgust as he ran after the pole, himself and Ginji barely managing to cling onto it as the plane lifted into the air.

The two wriggled and clamored like monkeys up the rope, Ban using his strength to force open the pilot's door. "Hey!" he shouted, reaching for his gun.

"I don't think so!" Ginji shouted, smashing open the glass of the passenger side window and heaving himself into the cockpit of the tiny private plane. He grabbed up the gun before the pilot could, kicking the man square in the face. Unfortunately, this knocked him straight into Ban and nearly threw Ban off the plane.

"Nice going, Ginji! You knocked the pilot out! Now who is going to fly the plane?!"

Ginji looked down at the controls. "Umm… oops?"

Back at the hospital, Akabane looked down at Hevn. "I am going after him."

"No, Akabane. I told you, the inheritance doesn't matter anymore."

"This is not about the inheritance. This is about your parents refusing to see your sister for what she is."

"A greedy, selfish brat who would off her parents for a few millions? Don't waste your energy. I'm just the same. I mean, look at how I treated you and Ban and Ginji. I made you pretend to be my fiancé!" She sighed in resignation. "I'm just as fake as my sister."

"You never killed anyone for money. Even if Ban-chan likes to complain that all your jobs nearly leave him dead. That is the difference."

As he tried to leave yet again, she desperately dug her fingers into the palm of his hand. "Will you stay if I tell you that I made you pretend to be my fiancé… and it made me fall in love for real?"

"Mayday, mayday!" Ginji shouted into the plane's radio back at the pier. "Someone, help! Our pilot's unconscious!"

"Calm down! Calm down!" a voice answered back, shouting as loudly as Ginji. "You have to stop panicking or we can't help you! Now, just do what we say!"

"Give me that," Ban snapped, taking the radio away from Ginji as he held the controls. "Get in back and put floatation devices on the hostages."

"Right," Ginji said, trotting in back. "Hello, MrMr. and MrsMrs. Hevn-san's parents!" He looked at the three, thenand then blinked in confusion. "Marci-chan? Why are you tied up?"

Marci refused to look at him. Both parents had angry, hard looks in their eyes. "Well, when we didn't think there was any chance we'd be rescued, Marci came clean with why she's tied up, didn't you dear?" her mother said, voice as frigid as an icebox. "Yes, it was a very interesting story she told us," the father said, sounding even more angry than his wife. Marci winced. Why had she felt the need to unburden her soul? If only she'd chosen to go to her death a conniving weasel, this wouldn't be happening. Just goes to show you that telling the truth doesn't pay, Marci reasoned.

Ginji undid the parents bindings first. "Ban-chan is trying to land the plane. You'd better put on some safety devices; he's never landed one before."

"Oh… my…" Hevn's mother said.

"Maybe we're all going to be dead after all," the father mused.

Switching back to the hospital, Akabane just looked confused. "You can't have fallen in love with me," he stammered. She seemed to have really fried his brain; he couldn't decide if he wanted to talk formally or informally. "I have only been pretending to be your fiancé for four days, if you include today."

"I didn't want to! But… you're so cute when you're wearing your glasses!"

It was Akabane's turn for his ears to turn red in embarrassment. He was about to say something in response when the sound of footfalls down the hallway caught his attention. "I have to go. Police are coming, and they are people I would rather not talk to," he informed her, rushing to her open hospital window and disappearing out of it.

"But… darn it, no matter what anyone says, he's a typical male to the bone! One mention of the l-word and he's invisible."

At the pier, the day was punctuated by the sound of loud crashing. The plane sat half out of the water, half buried in a massive concrete palm tree. Ban, groaning and holding his head, stumbled from the pilot's seat and collapsed dizzily on the grass. "There, I did what the man on the radio said and parked it in the concrete palm tree."

"He said to park it next to the tree, Ban-chan," Ginji informed Ban as he rushed to assist his friend. He'd been relatively cushioned from the impact by being in the pack of the plane with Hevn's family. "Are you guys okay?" Ginji called back.

Hevn's father and mother waved, standing beside a still bound Marci. "We're just fine, dear," her mother smiled. Of course, no plane crash could go without attracting the attention of the police and the media. The poor media, they didn't know if they should send reporters to the shooting lunatic at the hospital or the private plane crashing into a palm tree on the beach. Had Ban been coherent enough to do so, he would have tried to hog the media's attention and promote his and Ginji's services at the same time. Unfortunately, he was still seeing palm trees flying around his head. Ginji dragged him off to a quiet spot while Hevn's parents hogged the attention.

Back at the hospital, Akabane sat quietly on top of a television antenna, coat billowing around his legs in the wind. He was still confused as to why he hadn't gone after Clifford when he'd had the chance. It wasn't as if he was frightened of the bullets. Of course, he could justify it, if he felt so inclined, by saying that his heart and lungs hadn't recovered enough for a spirited foot chase. He refused to believe that he had chosen not to pursue Clifford because Hevn had asked him to. She didn't have any control over him at all. Nope, no control, he mentally muttered to himself reassuringly. There was no way in heaven or heck, pardon the pun, that someone like himself could fall into a weak emotion like love. Distracted, Akabane left the roof of the hospital to seek condolences elsewhere. At least he took comfort in the fact that Clifford hadn't entirely gotten away; perhaps he would have a chance to battle the infamous accident yet.

-To Be Continued-

7


	10. A Temporary End

"What's wrong, Hevn-san?" Ginji asked as he assisted Ban in pushing Hevn's wheelchair out to the waiting Lady Bug. Hevn felt rather silly. She was perfectly capable of walking despite the fresh dressings covering her still recovering skin. The hospital still forced her to ride out in a wheelchair, no matter how much she protested against it.

"The fact that they didn't manage to catch Clifford the accident," Hevn answered, voice dull. Ginji made a sad face, tightening his grip on the back of the chair.

"At least he doesn't stand a chance of inheriting your family fortune after Marci's confession," Ban reminded, hands itching to take out a smoke the minute they got outside of the smoke-free environment of the hospital.

Hevn looked down at her bandaged hands, folded solemnly in her lap. "According to the police report, she's going to claim she did it because of jealousy over me. How I was always the perfect daughter, and she felt smothered in my shadow." Hevn sighed deeply. "While I know money was her actual motivation, I can't help but feel that those statements are true."

"It isn't your fault that someone could become so jealous of you that they'd try to murder you," Ban said, opening the Lady Bug's doors. "If everyone went around worrying about what everyone else might be thinking about them, this world would be even more messed up than it is."

Hevn shook her head vigorously. "No, Ban, I think you're wrong. What we need is more people to worry about others. Then maybe we'll stop being so blinded by ourselves that we let these kind of things happen."

She was speaking also metaphorically of her relationship with Akabane. Since she'd confessed her feelings, she hadn't seen or heard from him once. She could understand not visiting, as she'd been surrounded by television reporters and large public gatherings didn't seem to be his thing. She couldn't understand why he wouldn't answer her phone calls or her text messages. She could understand if she figured that she'd frightened him off by throwing unwanted emotions at him. Of course he didn't love her. How could love have made her so blind that she couldn't see that he was incapable of returning such feelings to anyone?

Across town, Akabane looked down at the text messages on his phone. There were two that were troubling him at the moment. The first read "I'm getting out of hosp. today. Please come visit?" The second one, more blunt, read "Your things are here. Come get them."

He turned off the phone without making any action on the messages, sighing and leaning back. Every time he thought about how he hadn't visited her, even after the media blitz had died down, he got a funny twinge in his heart that bothered him. Maybe he was on the brink of cardiac arrest. Maybe the twinges were heralds of his impending death. At least he knew he wasn't in love with Hevn. After all, love didn't feel like someone trying to rip your heart out of your chest and stomp on it repeatedly.

"Jackal, stop grabbing at your chest," Himiko said suddenly, drawing him back out of dreamland. He hadn't realized he'd been doing that, and was rather embarrassed by it.

"I am sorry," he muttered, looking down at his shoes. They were starting to wear out. He would need a new pair relatively soon. "I think I am having cardiac failure. I keep getting these twinges in my chest…"

Himiko sighed and picked up a pair of chopsticks from the fast food table, bopping Akabane with the head on them. "That's guilt, doctor," she informed him. "You're feeling bad about not visiting Hevn in the hospital."

"I… am not."

"Then why has our entire conversation tonight revolved around you justifying exactly why you can't go see her in the hospital?" Himiko asked, waving the chopsticks at him. "Stop making excuses and go see her. You'll feel better and I won't have to hear about it." She put her share of the money in her pocket and pushed the rest at him in an envelope.

He looked down on the square of paper as thought it might bite him. "You are right. I at least should get my possessions from her and thank her for the interesting week she gave me." He pushed his chair back. "Goodnight, Himiko-chan."

She nodded. "Goodnight, Akabane-san." It was about five minutes later that Himiko would notice that Akabane had failed to pay for his share of the meal, despite the fact that he'd ordered more expensive items than she had. Akabane continued to stare down at the envelope, carrying it in both hands. He felt bad about it, as though he should have been visiting Hevn instead of going on a job…

Wait, he was actually thinking there was something he'd rather be doing… than going on a job?! He paused long enough to hit his head repeatedly on the glass window of a store front, hoping that he would knock some sense into himself. Love was the most pathetic of weak emotions. There was no place in a heart like his for such nonsense, only for the basic essentials needed to fight and grow stronger. He didn't need an additional weakness. He…

"Could you stop hitting your head on our window-front, please?" a woman asked, sounding irritated. "You're bothering our customers!"

Akabane paused and blushed. "Excuse me. I am a bit not well today."

The woman looked him over. "You can say that again, you're as pale as a ghost," the woman said, holding up a mirror. He jumped backwards, shocked. He really was as pale as a ghost!

To his surprise, the woman began to laugh. "Calm down, this is a novelty mirror! It makes you look pale!" She gestured over his shoulder. "We have a great supply of them, if you'd like to stop damaging our store front and come and look."

Akabane looked down at the envelope of cash still held in his trembling, gloved hands. Suddenly, he knew the perfect use for its contents. He only hoped it would work to alleviate his guilt symptoms.

Back at Hevn's apartment, Ban and Ginji helped her get situated and then stayed for a drink of tea and, of course, to take advantage of all the food Hevn had that they could get into their mouths while still looking like concerned friends. Hevn didn't particularly mind; her parents had gone back to America as soon as possible and her sister remained in jail, awaiting a trial for murder. She didn't want to be alone yet, not after what had happened that week, so she was willing to give up a few weeks worth of groceries for the companionship.

Eventually, however, it did get late enough that Ban and Ginji had to depart for the night. They'd kindly offered to stay all night, sleeping on the couch, but Hevn had felt that it was best for her to be alone with her thoughts for awhile. She could tell by the down looks on their faces that they'd been hoping to not sleep in their car for a night and get breakfast to boot; but she really needed the space. She needed to work out how to bundle her feelings into a little ball and send it up in flames.

She'd been alone with her thoughts for all of fifteen minutes before she heard a soft tap-tap-tap-tappity-tap at her balcony window. She whirled around in her chair, surprised to see Akabane sheepishly waving at her from the other side of the glass window. A large, bulky package tied in twine was resting under his left arm.

She didn't know if she was glad to see him or angry and hurt to see him, and thus, she didn't know if she was planning on letting him in. After realizing that he'd probably just cut the glass off and let himself in if she didn't, she eased herself out of her chair and shuffled over to open the latch.

"You've got a lot of nerve showing up, after not visiting me in the hospital or returning my phone calls."

"I know," he said. "I have a million excuses why I did not, but as Lady Poison has told me they are all nothing but excuses, I will not bother you with them," he shrugged. "This is for you," he said, pushing it into her bandaged hands.

Hevn looked down at it in surprise, and then slowly undid the wrappings. Her hands shook when she saw what was inside. "A… mirror? A MIRROR? Are you trying to mock me now?" she asked, eyes stinging with tears.

"No… no… it is a funny mirror. See? I thought you might feel better if you could laugh at yourself looking funny."

"Get the hell out," she snapped, throwing the mirror back at him. He caught it and set it down, giving her a pitiful look. "GET OUT!" she screamed, picking up a glass.

"I still have to get my things…"

"I'll throw them on the balcony. Just get out of my sight!" she demanded, waving the glass threateningly.

"I did not mean to offend you, Hevn-san, I thought…"

"How heartless can you be?" she snapped, throwing the glass at him. Rather than catch it, he let it sail past his shoulder and shatter on the wall. Tea dripped down the paper, staining it with a brown spider-pattern. Leaving the sobbing woman alone, Akabane disappeared back out the sliding glass door.

It took her about twenty minutes to regain her composure, after which time she stomped over and grabbed the mirror. As she lifted it up, intending to smash it, she finally did catch a glimpse of her mummy-bandaged face in the mirror. The way the mirror twisted and distorted it… it actually was funny, very funny.

Her arms felt like rubber as she lowered the mirror back to the floor, guilt washing through her body. She'd just seen it was a mirror and assumed he had intended to hurt her, and she'd been wrong. She rushed to the sliding door and threw it open, hoping he would be waiting for her to give his things back. "Akabane, I was wrong! I just looked at the mirror! I was wrong! I'm so sorry!" she called. She got no answer back except the howl of the wind, ruffling through what remained of her hair. Her legs started to feel as rubbery-heavy as her arms. "I'm… so sorry…"

Akabane was, by that time, across town. He was sitting in a plastic chair that was uncomfortably small, holding his chest and trying not to make odd faces. His heart hurt so badly he could hardly stand it, and not just his heart. His entire chest felt like it was burning up. Every beat was painful, as though his heart were a hammer against his ribcage.

A nurse attendant came over, bringing a wheelchair. "Can you move enough to get into the chair?" she asked. He nodded in the affirmative, uncharacteristically giving himself over to assistance as the nurse pulled on his arms. They'd decided to treat him as an emergency case since he'd come in complaining of heart pains and feeling like he was unable to breath.

"Such a tragedy," one nurse said to another as he was taken into a back room. "So young and thin for a heart attack…"

Akabane, for his part, lay very quietly and still. He hated wearing hospital gowns; it felt like being consistently naked to him. They had the hospital robe pushed down around his hips, running a machine over his chest that tickled. He was trying his best not to giggle and mess up either the readings or his cold countenance, but his chest was really sensitive.

The doctor looked very uncomforting as he picked up the read outs and studied the fuzzy mechanical ultrasound image of the heart. "Your aorta wall is incredibly weak."

"How weak?" he asked, trying to sit up. The doctor put a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't get up. Weak enough that if you'd waited another day to come in, you'd probably be dead." He set down his clip board. "I'm sending you into surgery the first thing in the morning."

Akabane blinked. "Repeat… that?"

"If you don't get a supportive mesh into your aorta, it is going to burst and you are going to bleed to death in a matter of seconds. That is as simple as I can say it." He gestured to the nurse. "Wheel him downstairs and start preparing for surgery."

"There has to be a mistake. I want a second opinion," Akabane demanded.

"I can bring in another doctor, but you can see the test results for yourself," the older doctor said with a shrug. "You need that surgery."

Akabane felt his numb as he resigned himself to that, sinking limply into the pillows as the nurse adjusted plain white sheets modestly over his chest before taking him down the hallway. Another nurse picked up the plastic bag containing his possessions and started carrying them down to the baggage hold. Right as she lifted the bag, the cell phone inside began to ring. She extracted the phone commenting, "Wouldn't want to run you out of batteries, would we?" as she turned the small hand-held off.

Back at her apartment, Hevn set down her own phone. He wouldn't answer. Well, there could be a logical explanation for that. He could have it turned off, or be somewhere he couldn't hear it. It didn't mean anything had necessarily happened to him, or that he was so angry he wouldn't come back. She still had all his things. He'd be back for them. She'd throw herself, apologizing, at his mercy when he did.

That plan didn't end up working. She found herself calling him once an hour, growing more and more frantic when he didn't answer his phone. When an entire day passed without word, she began to panic. She left a large apology note in her apartment on the off chance that he was waiting for a chance for her to go out to return for her things, then shuffled over to the Honky Tonk.

"Hey, Hevn," Ginji said as she entered. "Fresh dressings?" he asked, not knowing what else to say. Usually, he complimented her on her makeup. Since he wouldn't see it this time, he figured complimenting her bandages was the next best thing.

"Yo," Ban said. Kazuki, sitting at the far end of the bar with Shido and doing a crossword puzzle, acknowledged her with a nod.

"I have an unusual request for you guys," she said. "I need you to help me find Akabane-san. I have some things of his, and he won't answer my phone calls."

"Didn't you hear?" Kazuki asked, lifting his head from his puzzle. "He's in the hospital."

"Hos… hospital?" Hevn asked. "What happened to him?" she asked, terrified that she might have been the cause.

"I didn't hear that, just that he was in the hospital," Kazuki answered, his bells gently jingling. "Sorry I can't give you any more info-" He didn't finish because she was already out the door. A moment later, however, she sheepishly returned in order to ask Kazuki which hospital she would be immediately rushing off to.

By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was turned away as visiting hours were over and strictly enforced. By strictly enforced, it was meant that her throwing a hissy fit about needing to see him only got her forcibly escorted out the door by two security guards. She tried to sneak in the back way but got caught again, and stopped only when they threatened that they wouldn't let her in during regular visiting hours the next day.

They almost wished they had let her in, as she was there bright and early the next day to stand waiting at the nurses' stand, continually asking if visiting hours had started, and generally making a nuisance of herself. For her efforts, they let her in a full half hour early. Hevn didn't feel bad about putting on such a childish display. A squeaky wheel gets the grease, and she'd often found it necessary in her line of work as a mediator to be aggressive about pursuing things to the point of annoying.

The rooms she passed by were bright for the most part, a sort of artificial cheer hanging in them. People came, bringing flowers and cards, all acting as though every illness was one that could be pulled through. Everyone spoke of how good their ill beloved looked, and the sickeningly sweet scent of heavily perfumed flowers covered up the very real aura of death floating about the care unit.

She knocked cautiously on Akabane's door and, after getting no response, let herself in. He was curled up on his side in a position that looked like it couldn't possibly be doing his IV line any good, eyes shut tightly and snoring ever so slightly. He looked exactly as she'd last seen him, asleep on the mat beside her. He'd had more color in his skin then and a lack of tubes leading out of his body, but he was still the same man.

She set her small vase of flowers on a counter, feeling pity. His was the first room she'd walked to completely devoid of signs of friendship. No bright cards lined the walls; no get well drawings by small children. No flowers or fruit baskets sent by well-meaning friends, even if he'd been willing to send them baskets when they'd been sick. She wished she'd brought more than just her small vase. She would have to jump on Ginji's case about returning the favor when she returned home.

He looked so pretty when he was asleep, a halo of black hair surrounding his pale skin against white sheets. Almost angelic, if she hadn't know the true personality lurking inside. She sat down and brushed her fingers against his, touching each finger one by one. Finally, she broke down.

"I'm so sorry about the mirror. I looked in it after you were gone. It really was funny. I should have looked at it before judging you." She hesitated. "It may have been a funhouse mirror, but I think it reflected better than any real mirror you could have purchased; don't you?" she asked. He shuffled in his sleep. She leaned back in her chair. "I told mom and dad that we weren't really engaged. They're rather furious at me. I probably would be out of the will if Marci weren't in jail for attempting to murder them. As for Clifford… he's still out there, so you have to get well quickly. He might come after you." She looked over, feeling bolder than she had before by the fact that he was still in a sound sleep. She could say everything she needed to say to him in a practice run before she had to say it to him conscious.

"You were also right in that… I can't have fallen in love in four days. But I definitely felt something, whether it be lust or infatuation. If you're willing, I'd like to find out what I felt. I don't suppose you will be, after I rejected your gift and the way I've treated you this week… and the fact that I'm indirectly responsible for landing you in the hospital. If you hadn't carried me to the hospital and worn out your powers, you wouldn't be here…" She said, beginning to choke on her words as tears welled up in her eyes.

"I blame Marci for that one, but feel free to kick yourself for the rest all you want. I will not stop you."

Hevn jumped a good three feet in the air at the sound of his voice. "You were AWAKE?" she asked, shocked

"Mmm, you made so much noise arranging your vase that I could not help but wake up, but I was a little bit mad at you so I childishly pretended that I had not." He scooted himself upright and grinned at her. "I am glad I did now, because you seem to have poured your guts out with the intent that I would never consciously hear those words."

She was blushing as red as a tomato by that point. "You… you… I am at a loss for words to describe you!" she said, throwing up her hands in disgust. She was not amused by the fact that he started laughing at her gesture. She was glad that she'd made him laugh on the other hand.

She plopped herself down in her chair, rubbing her bandages. "Here we sit, me in bandages and you with an IV and a bunch of wires sticking out of your arm. Don't we make a sorry couple?" she looked up and met him squarely in the eye. "By couple, I mean what I said. I want to explore this feeling."

He hesitated, and then looked away. "I can not. Love is a weak emotion."

"How can you say that?" she asked. "Love is… to quote an old movie, love is the greatest force on Earth, greater than gravity!"

He blinked at her, cocking his head to the side. "I do not think I have seen that movie."

She smacked her head in frustration. "That's another thing. Drop the 'do nots' and the 'have nots' and the 'yes ma'ams.' Talk to me like I'm your friend."

He studied her for another moment before rebelliously answering, "Yes ma'am."

"Oh, you're impossible!" she sighed, flopping down in the chair. "I give up! You stubbornness has outpaced mine. You win, great king of the jack asses."

Akabane, however, was busily letting the gears in his mind work. Love was the greatest force on Earth? Well, love did seem to be the power that let Ban and Ginji consistently beat him in battle… the way they almost knew what one another were thinking and feeling although separated by great physical boundaries… the way they could move in unison without even speaking. Maybe he'd misjudged love as badly as Hevn had misjudged his present of the mirror. If love could give him that kind of power, perhaps he should try love.

"I think this relationship is currently carrying too much baggage to go anywhere."

She nodded, sighing miserably. "I understand. I'll let myself out." As she was standing up, she felt a hand grasp her wrist. She looked down to see luscious purple eyes gazing up at her.

"Hello, Hevn-san. My name is Akabane. I do not- don't- think we've met before. Would you care to go on a date?"

She grinned more broadly than she had all week. "Why certainly, stranger. I would love to." She leaned down, placing what unburned parts of her lips she could against his mouth. She put an arm around his head, lightly touching his neck, as she began to kiss…

"Excuse me!" a female voice boomed from the doorway, causing the two to jump. "I don't think the patient is healthy enough for horseplay yet."

Hevn turned absolutely red. "Of… of course not…" she blushed. She looked over her shoulder at him. "Call me when you're ready to go home. My apartment is open if you need a place to convalesce for awhile."

"I'll remember you offered when its two am and I can't get out of the bed to get myself to the bathroom," he answered earnestly, waving as she disappeared out of the hospital room. Obviously, this was either the start or something beautiful or horribly disfiguring. Neither of them was sure which, yet.

-The End-

----

--0--

There will, eventually, be a squeal to this story. It's just a matter of when.


End file.
